I have finished sophomore year and will be a junior next year. I have taken all pre-ap (honors) and “2” ap classes so far. My gpa right now is a 3.66 which isn’t terrible, but also frustrating for me. The first two years have in general been difficult for me with the rigorous courses I have taken. I managed to get a 95 in ap human geo freshmen year, but I got a 3 on the AP exam which was shocking, because my school had almost a 90% passing rate with even C students getting 4s. Sophomore year it got worse as I took WHAP and ended up to dropping out of the class after making a C+ in the first sem. I originally wanted to take ap calc bc, ap chem, and apes junior year, (my strong subject is science) but I switched out of the because my confidence was messed up after the awful WHAP experience. My school does not give much of a gpa or class rank boost to pre-ap or ap classes, making it easy for regular students to get into top 10%, which gives me a lot of regret in my decisions to take difficult classes. Currently I have no chance of getting top 10% now and I’m stuck around 15-20%. (170/920) and I fear taking any more ap classes (especially the harder ones) will knock me out of the first quartile and lower my gpa even more. Is it better if I just take all regular classes junior and senior year to get my gpa and class rank up, or is it ok to take ap’s and have a lower gpa? People keep saying it’s best to take the rigorous classes possible at your school, but I also hear others say the gpa itself is more important. I can’t change my courses for next year, but I can for senior year. I simply don’t know what to do, and my confidence is messed up. Any advice would be very helpful. Thanks.
Freshmen year grades:
English 1 Pre-AP: B/B+
Geometry Pre-AP: A/B
Biology Pre-AP: A/A
Human Geo AP: A/A
Spanish 1: A/A
Spanish 2: A/A
Sophomore year grades:
English 2 Pre-AP: A/A
Algebra 2 Pre-AP: A+/A
Precal Pre-AP: A/B (struggled with trig in second sem, I feared doing ap calc bc after that)
Chemistry Pre-AP A/A+
WHAP/ World History (reg): C+/A+ (huge difference, that’s why a lot reg students get into top 10%)
Spanish 3 Pre-AP: B-/B- (I didn’t go on to take AP Spanish because I struggled a lot in that class)
The preferred answer to your title question is a high GPA in the harder courses.
But if you do not expect to earn a high GPA in all harder courses, you need to be selective about what harder courses to choose in order to show rigor in your course selection while still earning a high GPA.
Note: for many colleges, unweighted GPA (with context of how hard courses you chose) or a weighted GPA recalculated by the college’s method matters more than a weighted GPA calculated by your high school, although there may be some colleges that take high school weighted GPA at face value.
Since you seem to be concerned about class rank, are you in Texas?
How about you take one AP class per block, one pre-AP class per block, one regular academic class per block, and one non-academic class per block? That should provide rigor and balance for most colleges.
have you taken the SAT/ACT yet?
Consider where you want to go. Our competitive flagship state U seems not to consider rigor. From past admissions, it seems that students with high GPAs in standard classes did better in admissions (and honors, and merit scholarships) than students with moderately high GPAs who took all honors and AP classes, which is really inappropriate, since most of the kids who usually take honors and AP could sleep through standard classes and get a perfect GPA. Applying to the most selective schools? You need a very high GPA in all honors and AP classes.
Also consider what education you want. Do you want to actually learn something in high school, or do you just see it as a launching pad for college?
I would recommend that you take AP in subjects you enjoy, and tend to do well in, and standard in the ones that are hard for you. Even more, I recommend that you try to get into sections with great teachers - that makes a huge difference in how much you’ll learn, and how well you’ll do.
I agree with that, or taking preAP or Honors courses that are not AP in the subjects you need. You certainly should not be struggling mightily with those AP classes at the cost of your grades. I absolutely do not recommend taking Calc B/C. Regular calculus this year would be just fine. Does your school have Spanish 4 that is not AP? If you take an AP course, you might want to consider the AP Physics 1 of available.
@cptofthehouse@MYOS1634 My school doesn’t offer regular calculus, there is only ap ab and bc. Both are known to be very difficult at my school and almost no one makes As in it, so I’m probably going to just take calculus in college.
What math will you be taking instead of calculus?
What major are you thinking of?
(Calculus is not required for about half majors and for some such as Economics and business, it’s a special one-semester course with economics applications).
What state do you live in?
Do you know your parents’ budget for College?
While being below top 15% probably makes UT Austin unrealistic, many other Texas publics have automatic admission for the top 25% with high enough test scores.
Calculus AB in high school is slower paced than calculus in college.
It looks like your high school is giving incentives to choose easy A grades over greater learning and better preparation for college in more rigorous courses. Kind of like medical and law schools with respect to college students doing pre-med and pre-law.
@MYOS1634 I am taking statistics next year for math. Senior year I’m not sure yet. I want to major in the sciences, most likely biology or chemistry because I enjoy both and my highest grades came from both of those courses. I live in Texas, and I want to stay in Texas for college
In that case, your best choice is to limit your AP choices to 1-2 APs a year. TTU, UTSA, UNT… Won’t care about the number of APs you took as much as your class rank, which should be top 20%.
Look into the different science-related majors. Biology has terrible job prospects; chemistry is a bit better, similar in % to English; but there are lots of majors, such as Food science or agricultural economics, with lots of biology and chemistry classes and good job prospects. In addition, those won’t require the hardest form of calculus as a weedout first year class.
However, if you truly want to major in biology or chemistry in college and math doesn’t come easy, take calc AB next year, because it’ll be a gentle, slow-paced introduction to calculus compared to college calculus1 for science majors (which is more than twice faster paced than calc AB and is weedout.)