<p>Hi, I go to a public school that does not offer any AP Soph classes (or freshman classes for that matter). I've seen a lot of other students take multiple AP classes in their schedule in sophomore and even freshman year. I currently am taking the most rigorous schedule available to me (all honors), but beyond that, no APs. How important is having APs in one's schedule early in sophomore year? Thanks!</p>
<p>It’s good to have one but colleges will understand if your school doesn’t off them at all? What college do you wanna go to?</p>
<p>
Then you’re not expected to take them. Colleges want you to take the most challenging schedule given what your school offers and allows you to take, so it doesn’t matter what happens at other schools. (You could have looked into it more, though…my school used to let me take AP classes that weren’t supposed to be open to people in my grade.)</p>
<p>Yes, colleges do expect you to challenge yourself as much as possible in the context of your high school. </p>
<p>My high school only offered 2-3 AP classes total for freshmen and sophomores. However, our valedictorian (she is going to Yale next fall) commuted to the senior high school (for my school district, 9/10 and 11/12 go to different schools. There’s “high school,” then there’s “senior high.”) to take 4 more AP courses, since the senior high offered the full range of AP courses. Undoubtedly, this boosted her GPA significantly, as AP courses are worth more grade points. It basically secured her spot as rank 1 in our grade.</p>
<p>My point is, if you really want to stand out, you can find a way. Take college-level classes at a community college. Don’t let what your high school can offer you (or lack thereof) limit you. </p>
<p>You run a danger of asking that question in this forum, since someone is bound to say that you need 12 AP courses in HS to go to a top school.</p>
<p>Reality check from the MIT admissions blog:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Your supposed to take the most challenging schedule possible. If your school doesn’t offer APs then colleges won’t punish you for that. </p>
<p>Thanks for the help! Just to clarify, my school does offer many many APs at Junior/Senior level, but people do not have the time to take them all. I will definitely try to go beyond my school a little and see if I can participate in some extra classes. To some extent, I am trying to look into it, and I may very well take AP BC Calc and possibly one other one, but at my school, there’s recently been a big initiative away from academic studies for the most part…Also, would you guys recommend self-studying at all to take APs or just waiting?</p>
<p>self-studying is fine for the less “difficult” AP classes. Classes like AP Enviro, Human Geography, Psychology, Statistics, are common seen as easier classes. These may be worth self-studying if you think you can handle it. Things like Calc, Chemistry, Physics, etc. are much more intensive. You’d want to be in the actual class getting direct help from a teacher to make sure you understand the concepts, it is very hard to get them on your own.</p>
<p>Sophomore year APs (well school dependent) are very good at getting you ready for tougher schedules as well as letting you knock out some of the hard ones before you run into schedules with many more APs.</p>
<p>Hehe, I had (edit: many) APs and got rejected from Berkeley’s EECS. True on not guaranteeing you a spot, but now I attend a low tier school in which APs really do matter! There’s tons of perks to abusing a ton of college credit in which the almost no people (that attend a low tier) get to take advantage of.</p>