<p>I see other people take upwards of 5 APs durimg their junior and senior year, even though the GCs at my school suggest to take at most 2, does this mean that admissionswill view these students in a bad light/don't know their limit (if they get a few Bs and maybe a C)...???</p>
<p>The ideal number would be the max # you think you could do well on. I wouldn’t sacrifice Gpa for more APs. However, for selective schools you want your counselor to say you took the most rigorous courseload.</p>
<p>Our school tries to limit 3 APs per year…this is the recommended maximum number. Anything over that needs to be signed off by parents/counselor/student/principal. </p>
<p>I believe that only strongly motivated students that are not being challenged by standard curriculum should take more than 2 or 3 a year.</p>
<p>So… The vast majority of people on CC then…</p>
<p>Note that AP courses can vary significantly in difficulty and workload.</p>
<p>I think 10 throughout 4 years of HS is a perfect amount. I took 12 though.</p>
<p>D took all the APs her school offered - 4. She was admitted to several very selective schools.</p>
<p>There have been people at my school who took 7 APs in one year (one of them got into Harvard). There have also been people at my school who never take an AP class during their high school career. If you’re applying to a selective university, you should probably try to fill your schedule with as many APs as possible. If you can’t handle a hard schedule, or are applying to a not-so-selective university, then you might not need to take as many. It also depends on how many APs your high school offers.</p>
<p>Depends on the person and their goals.</p>
<p>My school offers 13.</p>
<p>3 of those being Art History, Music Theory, and Human Geography (which is a freshmen-only class that was offered the year I was a sophomore). </p>
<p>The four I didn’t take are US History, Physics, Stats and Psych (which I’m just taking an honors version of). </p>
<p>The reasons I didn’t take those for are because my schedule was literally filled to the max. I think it all depends on your schedule and what your main focus is (I doubled up on sciences for 2 years, so after this year I will have 6 years of science.) </p>
<p>The other three are kind of like magnet courses, and usually only Art/Music kids take, and also have no value to me, so naturally, I did not take them.</p>
<p>So yeah I’m only graduating with 6</p>
<p>“Ideal” is whatever’s right for you. For one of my kid’s sophomore/junior/senior years it was 2/6/6 and for the other it was 2/7/7. Both got into their first choice schools.</p>
<p>Honestly, there is no “ideal” amount of AP classes you should take. You may have heard of students who have taken as many as 12-15 AP courses throughout their entire high school career and still get rejected from top colleges and highly selective universities. You should take as many AP’s as you can handle; you don’t want to risk running yourself into the ground with a massive workload and not have enough time to do anything else. I have seen people take only a couple of AP classes and were still accepted at those highly competitive schools. I have also seen people who’ve taken more than 5 or 6 AP classes in their junior and/or senior year, and they were rejected as those top schools (not to mention, he regretted taking those classes because he had no time to do anything else and he ran on less than 5 hours of sleep a night). In conclusion, don’t overwhelm yourself; take what you can handle. Challenge yourself, but make sure you have time for other things too.</p>