How to Tell If an AP Course Isn’t the Right Choice

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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"FAR FROM BEING AN ACT of impulsiveness, the decision to enroll in one or more Advanced Placement courses necessitates careful thought. Each student must weigh his or her overall readiness for AP-level studies, as well as readiness for individual AP classes.

While the general rigor of AP courses may suit you well, not all AP subjects will be equally right for you. To ensure that you choose the appropriate classes, consider these three signs that an AP course may not be right for you:

You have successfully completed a very similar course.
Your target colleges offer more credit for other types of courses.
Your schedule or stress threshold will not accommodate an AP workload." …

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Or:

  • An AP elective like statistics, psychology, or human geography is taken instead of an expected core college prep course, such as precalculus, foreign language level 3 or 4, or physics.
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One big challenge is that “ Your schedule or stress threshold will not accommodate an AP workload.” is very hard to determine in advance.

It’s a very typical in the High school forum - “can I handle X AP courses”? That’s hard to answer in advance by parents or school counselors, let alone random people on a web site.

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But also, different AP courses can be different levels of work and intellectual difficulty. AP human geography is often considered easier than AP English literature or AP calculus BC (in one year starting from precalculus).

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Personal experience here, but DD has found that the first three-to-four weeks have school have always been the hardest of the year. Having only attended one high school, we can’t say if this is the same everywhere or not. We could also chalk it up to the adjustment period to new schedule, new teachers, adapting to new and specific expectations, erasing summer melt, waking two hours earlier every day, etc. etc. Sometimes I wonder if teachers come fast out of the gate too, whether because of their own pent up excitement or to set the bar up front for academic and behavior expectations from the kids. Regardless, with all that going on, it can be unclear at the start of the school year as to whether one has made the right choices. Typically students have a limited time to drop/switch before they get stamped with a W on their transcript too.