My school offers every single AP so how many of those should I take to be considered rigorous? I read that 4 APs where your school offers 20 is not rigorous but my school offers more than 20.
It depends on you! I only took AP English in my senior year, and it is rigorous. What courses are you considering?
Do they set a limit on the amount of AP courses per year, or would they let you have all AP courses in one year? You should think about what you’re best in first, decide which AP courses are most interesting, and take those first. Then go down the list and take the ones you think you could work in. My school doesn’t have a lot of AP courses, so I am taking as many as possible. You should take as many AP courses as possible to where you can have all A’s or A/B’s. I would take at least around 2 or 3 per year… taking any more would be rough as heck.
That’s a question for your GC. How many AP’s would you need for him/her to check the “most rigorous” box on the Secondary School Report. In my mind, taking 6-8 over the course of a HS career is rigorous enough. Certainly, in the college admissions process IMO, taking more will not add any incremental strength to your application.
My school offers around 15 APs. Yes, there are kids who take 5 APs out of the 7 classes we’re allowed to take. And yes, every year there’s one or two kids who end up exhausting all of our APs available. I don’t really think it’s a smart idea because why take 5 APs when you get Bs in all of them? I’d rather take 2 and get As in both.
If your school offers more than 20 APs, it’d be impossible for you to take all of them. Schools will look at that and take it into considersation. Although, if you’re looking to get into top ranked schools, it’s best to have as many as possible. 4 APs vs another kid in your grade who’s taken 12 isn’t very impressive and won’t make you competitive. If you stretch it all out and take 2-3 per year, starting your sophomore year, you could easily have 6-10 APs under your belt by the time you graduate.
Schools also want to see classes that you’re interested in. If you hate physics, then don’t take AP physics. But if you want to major in biology, then why take AP art? At the end of the day it all boils down to what you can handle, and what classes you’d be happiest taking.
Daughter’s school offers 29. Most honors kids take 1 freshman year, 1 or 2 sophomore year and 3 junior and senior year.
My child’s school is like that. There were several admitted to Princeton, Yale, Chicago, etc.
I can tell you there were several kids in the group that got into these very top schools that had 5.0 GPAs their junior year.
Which means ALL APs junior year (5 AP classes each semester Junior year), straight As.
They probably would have done the same Freshman and Soph if it was possible to take all weighted classes those years.