<p>I'm a sophomore right now and planning towards my Junior year next year, and trying to decide the best course of action towards APs. So far, here is what I have and plan on having:</p>
<p>Sophomore Year
World History (this and Art History are only APs sophomores can take)</p>
<p>Junior Year
Computer Science A
Statistics
Biology
US History
[Self Study?] Environmental Study</p>
<p>Senior Year
Chemistry
Physics B
Calculus BC
Microeconomics
??? English Literature ???</p>
<p>So now I'm curious as to how important APs really are for admissions to colleges like MIT. I'm also wondering if I should really strive to get the 8 APs by the end of Junior Year so that I can get National Scholar in time for the College Application.</p>
<p>Should I bother self studying Environmental Science, and do you think I should add anything else to the schedule? Right now, I'm worried that everything might not even fit because these are 1-class courses and there may be conflicts.</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter that much bro. Main benefit to APs is to prove your competence in a certain subject. I had taken 4 APs when I applied and that was fine (5s in all). Good luck, bro!</p>
<p>I think APs probably matter more or less based on the context of your school. If your school offers sixteen aps and you only take four, your application is likely to be less strong than someone who took two because their school only offered two.</p>
<p>“national scholar” is not going to be something that differentiates you from the pool. take APs because you want to take them and because you would like the challenge and education, not because of a strategic benefit for college. it isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>It is important to show that you have challenged yourself – but this doesn’t necessarily mean having taken 5, 8, or 24 AP classes. There are challenging AND interesting non-AP classes. But if taking AP classes is the best (or the only) way to challenge yourself academically in your school, then yes you might want to take those classes. </p>
<p>AP EXAMS themselves are not as important because AP scores are not required like SAT Reasoning Test (or ACT) and Subject Tests, although there is a space for you to put down AP scores in the app (I didn’t put down the scores of ALL the AP exams I took… some were slightly embarrassing lol).</p>
While my school does offer more APs than I’m taking, I am taking ones which I find interesting and will fit into my schedule.</p>
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<p>I was actually more worried about being differentiated in a bad way by not having national scholar rather than being differentiated by having it. :p</p>
<p>yeah…that won’t be a negative differentiation. it’s not something honestly that means much, maybe anything, in our process, for a variety of reasons.</p>