<p>My school sends 25% of its students to Ivies, and nobody takes the hardest course load possible.</p>
<p>I bet your school offers like 10 -20 AP’s though, so the “Hardest load” available at a school is subjective, much like a black diamond when it comes to snow sports.</p>
<p>I’d say take as many AP classes as you can get get A’s and B’s by working really hard (there’s no easy path to success in life, yeah it’s truism but that doesn’t make it not true.) I’m not sure I agree about a C being equal to a standard version of the class. Of course if taking one AP class gives you a C, then you may want to consider community college. Nothing aginst CC, but you obviously can’t handle regular collegiate work if you struggle with AP (there are exceptions to this if you have a jerk teacher, but most AP teachers, at least at my HS, were fair).</p>