<p>My high school doesn't offer the largest amount of APs, compared to other schools. However, throughout my HS career, I've taken pretty much taken the most challenging classes my high school offers (except for taking chem in 9th grade instead of chem honors), and I will have taken, by the end of HS, AP chem, calc AB and BC, Physics, Spanish, Lit, and Lang. </p>
<p>I know that colleges will see that my school only offers said APs, but I still get nervous because I see other applicants with more than a dozen APs, and I am wondering if colleges will prefer those students who took more APs.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. My school doesn’t offer ANY official APs. I think as long as you take the hardest classes available and do the best you can in them, no one will hold anything against you. :)</p>
<p>Yep, like everyone else said, don’t worry!! My HS only offers 3 AP courses, and for some time, I was worried about how I would look compared to those guys with 9 APs or whatever. I talked to my counselor and admissions officers at U of Michigan and U Chicago, and they all pretty much said the same thing. When they look at your courses, they look at it in the context of your own school. As long as you’ve challenged yourself as much as your high school allows you to, you’ll be just fine.</p>
<p>Besides, colleges do an individual review of your app. If you’re good enough to get in, you’ll get in. They won’t be like “Oh, but this other guy has 1 more AP than him…we should let him in instead”.</p>
<p>Consider yourself LUCKY! You will only be judged on whether or not you took advantage of the opportunities available to you at your high school.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m pretty fortunate. I’ve pretty much breezed through high school, taking the hardest courses possible, which ended up being EXTREMELY easy for me.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for admissions to the very toughest schools (HYPSM), a lot of students going there did self-study for APs. However, you will have taken 7 APs. There are kids who take fewer than 7 APs, whose schools offer more, who still get into the very top schools. It’s likely helpful to self-study, but I think colleges would look at it more as an EC than relating to your GPA/test scores. And if, as you said, you don’t have time to self-study, it probably means you’re keeping yourself busy. Which is often just as good, if not better, than taking more AP courses.</p>
<p>^Sorry, that was a bit ranty. Just needed to say, you’ll be facing a few people who take advantage of more resources than would seem available to them. However, for most people who get in, they pretty much just take the hardest classes that are available, and have great personal qualities.</p>
<p>I mean, I know that self studying would probably look great, but as I said before, I don’t think I would have the time. I’m also under the impression that not a huge amount of people do self study, right?</p>
<p>No, not a huge amount of people self-study, but a few people do, especially on CC. If you’re interested, you can check out the AP test forum where people post stuff about self-studying:</p>
<p>Also, my school doesn’t offer that many AP classes either and those offered are only offered senior year. I’ve always been worrying about the same thing, so like Yosup, I asked admission officers from various colleges about this, and all of them confirmed that you’ll only be judged based on the context of your school. Still, I think not having AP classes is a disadvantage because we’ll be competiting with people who probably look much more prepared academically.</p>