How many CC classes should I take as a high schooler?

College Search & Selection Community Colleges
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Hello, I’m currently a junior. I want to take community college classes only because by the time I graduate, I will only have taken 4 Honors and 5 APs, and my current high school offers 15 APs. Some of my friends who are also juniors have already taken or are taking 6+ APs, and in order for me to apply to the competitive schools I want to get accepted into, I need to be as competitive as my classmates. Obviously 5 total APs looks weak next to someone who took 10. However, I have a bit of an excuse–my current high school allows kids to take APs as sophomores, and my old highschool(which I attended for 9th & 10th) did not offer any APs at all, so I’m naturally at a disadvantage, which is why I want to try and make up for it by taking summer community college classes.

I’m interested in taking an abnormal psych class (3 credits) and a behavior modification class (3 credits), both online. However, I want to try and add as many classes to my transcript as I can, but I don’t know if this is possible without causing some kind of burnout. I will admit I am a huge procrastinator (who wants to do homework when they could go to the beach?), and I’m not sure how easy it will be to make myself sit down for a few hours to do each class every day. My summer is also going to be very busy. I’ll have cross country, a 2 week summer camp, college tours, a potential job, and most likely will be studying for the fall ACT, as well as having AP summer work. Luckily, the summer classes will end August 1, so I’ll have all of August to work on my application essays.

Should I take more than 2 classes? I heard that for three credits, you should have 6 hours of homework per week, although I’m not sure if this applies to community college or universities. Do community colleges have slightly less workloads because most of the students are parents/full time workers? I’m not sure, I’m new to this whole thing. Either way, I don’t want to have potentially ~18 hours of homework per week on top of everything else I’m doing. Should I stick with just the two classes, or should I also take another easy online class, something like photography or creative writing or something that won’t be too difficult/stressful, just to get the extra credit on my transcript?
Or would a third psych class look more impressive to a college counselor? Or would a creative writing class carry the same weight as a college class?

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You’re not at a disadvantage. Colleges understand that some schools have limitations on what courses that can be taken. No college will expect you to seek out courses ourside of the HS for the sole purpose of “looking better” to colleges.

That’s a rule of thumb only. Just like in HS, some CC classes can have minimal work outside of class, and others have far in excess of 6 hours for a 3 credit course. A lot is left up to the discretion of the instructor.

FWIW, many photography and creative writing courses are very time consuming.

So, to get back to your question, I would suggest that you limit the number of CC courses to the same number of HS classes you are replacing. So, if you are eliminating 1 HS class, take 1 CC class. If you are planning a full HS schedule plus EC’s plus colleges apps, you’d be crazy to take any CC classes.