How many APs are enough APs?

Applying to College
1

<p>My school is a very high-ranked and rigorous HS (#1 in state, top 5 in region) that offers only Honors and AP courses (except PE of course), and there are 21 APs available. By the end of senior yearI'll have done 8:</p>

<p>2 in 10th grade (APUSH&Lang)
3 in 11th (Microeconomics, Calc AB, and French)
and hopefully 3 in 12th (Multivariable, Stats, and Bio, plus an independent study in French that might be graded on an AP scale)</p>

<p>Is that enough when I have so many available, and it's pretty common for people at my school to take 4 or 5 per year? The only real difference in difficulty between the APs and the honors courses at my school is the faster pacing to prep for the tests, so I only chose classes that I was interested in and tried not to give myself a million AP tests. Is this going to look like I slacked off/will it hurt me to have only taken 8 APs when I could have done more? Or am I stressing over nothing?</p>

2

<p>MV isn’t an AP. Did you mean Calc BC? I’d recommend you also take Eng Lit, World, Chem, and Physics C.</p>

3

<p>Yeah, sorry-- my school calls it “AP Multivariable” bc that’s how they grade it, and I’ll take the BC test since between AB and MV I’ll have covered all the material.</p>

4

<p>MV in HS is unusual, but a very good sign. If you’re shooting for a selective school, you should try to keep up with your peers who are taking 4-5 APs/year.</p>

5

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<p>Depends on your other activities. If you are doing a varsity sport and one other really good activity… if you can show why you are passionate about the classes and activities that you are interested in … how could that hurt?</p>

<p>More than 30,000 students take 8 or more AP tests by the time they graduate. See <a href=“http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/2013”>http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>but some of those students have done nothing else and there is a tradeoff between doing various high school activities. In the end, you have to be passionate about what you chose.</p>

6

<p>Ask your GC to see if your curriculum is considered the most rigor at your school. Otherwise, 8AP is much higher than the average. There were 2.2 millions students taking AP last year and probably around 850,000 were senior. 30,000 would be just below 4% of total.</p>