<p>Assuming one has EC's, volunteering, good GPA and SAT overall, how much emphasis does Princeton, or any other Ivy League place on a very demanding and rigorous AP course schedule, say around 14 AP's (with good scores) before graduation?</p>
<p>14 AP’s (assuming you get 5’s) will put you near the top of the applicant pool. A rigorous course load will help you, but the extent it does is unclear. Plenty of people with high stats and strong schedules get rejected.</p>
<p>My school offers 8, and I took four… That said, I don’t feel so good about that anymore.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say it puts you at the top of the pool. What’s your real interest? Personally I could have the potential to take 10+ tests, but I choose not to. Why? It’s because I have no interest in taking classes like Econ, Languages, Psych, or Music Theory. It might help, but I doubt it puts you at the top of the applicant pool compared to people who took fewer APs.</p>
<p>Your course load is evaluated in the context of your school. In general, Princeton expects you to take the hardest course load available.</p>
<p>The reason I’m asking is that our school has a lot of graduation requirements and most of them fall in the AP category. So, arguably, even if I didn’t want to take so many, I still would <em>have</em> to take around 10 and the others are the classes I <em>want</em> to take…In context, it still would be the most rigorous at our school though.</p>
<p>I meant “near the top of the applicant pool” solely in terms of the number of AP’s taken–not in terms of competitiveness for admission.</p>
<p>theres obv no set # or types of APs you have to take. a school is looking to see that you exhausted your hs’s curriculum. that being said…from the other 2 threads you posted, i can see you’re a sophomore…maybe i’m old fashioned but i think you should be enjoying life, doing things you love, and not worrying about the crapshoot that is college admissions. you have PLENTY of time until college becomes a major concern</p>
<p>monkeycloud-- your school has graduation requirements that involve taking APs? wow…i go to a public high school and have almost exhausted my school’s supply of APs (9), but our graduation requirements are pretty basic (4 yrs Eng, 3 yrs Sci & Math, 2 yrs history, 1 yr phys ed)</p>
<p>my school only offers 7 AP courses.
however, this doesn’t put me at a disadvantage. princeton will review your application holistically, that is to say that they will review you in the context of your own academic environment. they want to know what type of a student you are, not just that you are taking hard classes. lots of people apply to princeton with loads of APs…that said, there is a limited amount of weight that can be put on the classes themselves. As one person mentioned earlier, though, scoring high on the AP exams is certainly notable…</p>
<p>It’s always amusing to me to see people say their school “only” has 8 or 9 AP courses, when mine has 3 - Spanish, U.S. History, and Calc. Quite a disadvantage to those who have a strength in math & science.</p>
<p>What’s worse is that the AP course is the honors course. If you don’t take the AP class, you have to take the normal class with the.. well.. normal kids.</p>
<p>how the hell did you manage 14 APs? were you taking them as a freshman?</p>
<p>I will have taken 10 by the time I graduate and I thought THAT was a lot</p>
<p>and i seriously doubt that your school requires you to take at least 10 APs in order to graduate, that is unheard of, even at the top private schools like exeter or dalton or whatever</p>
<p>It’s usually the public magnets, not private schools, that require a certain number of AP’s anyway.</p>
<p>And heaven forbid you take classes with normal kids. lol</p>
<p>Well pretty much I was on the advanced track since 5th grade and they don’t let you back down to a lower level class. So things like math and foreign language, for example, naturally fall into AP level as some other things. And you need specific amount of years for graduation. </p>
<p>Haha…exactly. :)</p>
<p>Butternut, if you’re referring to what I had said… as far as my situation goes, it’s not the kids in the class that are the problem. I probably shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that the classes one step down from AP are not challenging, do not require any sort of work, and are simply a bore. There’s really no in between.</p>
<p>If you guys want to see a good example of how adcoms at the best schools look at your applications you should take a look at this article:</p>
<p>[Newsweek.com:</a> Society: Inside The Admissions Game](<a href=“University of Chicago News”>University of Chicago News)</p>
<p>When you run that gauntlet and succeed, it should make you proud.</p>
<p>Reading the article made me think- it be fun to be a fly on the wall in the Princton Admissions room.
I liked the quote, “You know you’re doing well when your GPA is higher than the number of hours you sleep a night.”</p>
<p>Is the college in the article U of Chicago?</p>
<p>Yes it is UChicago</p>