I am currently a junior. Looking at the courses I took, will the fact that I took a non-honors class freshman year, and didn’t take AP Bio and Calc AB in sophomore year hurt my application to elite schools (assuming I continue to have straight As and get a 35 on the ACT or a 1520+ on the SAT)?
Freshman Year:
Honors Biology
Honors English I
Honors Precalculus
Honors World History
Art I (not honors)
Honors Spanish I
Sophomore Year:
Honors Chemistry
Honors English II
Honors Calculus
Honors Government and Politics (for some reason, the school said the class would not count as an AP class, but we could take the AP test. I got a 5 on it.)
Honors Spanish II
Honors Health Education
Junior Year:
AP Environmental Science
AP Calculus AB
AP English Language and Composition
AP United States History
Honors Art 3
Honors Spanish III
Senior Year (hopefully):
AP Psychology
AP Calculus BC
AP Bio - tentative (?? Heard it’s exceedingly difficult; is that a common complaint?)
AP English Literature and Composition
Honors Spanish IV or AP Spanish (suggestions?)
AP Human Geography or Honors/AP Physics (just throwing this out here from nowhere. I haven’t the faintest idea what I want my major to be, and I’m not sure if I should take such varied APs such as these?)
You’re fine. AP Bio is a lot of work, but not atrociously difficult from what I saw. But a LOT of work. I would not thak AP Bio and AP Physics the same year - that sounds like a lot. How about AP Euro or AP World?
Yes. Chemstiry as a sophomore is the “normal” sequence.
No. You’re overthinking this. Many, idf not most, HS’s do not offer honors courses in every single discipline, especially for freshman. It’s the rare HS that offers honors versions of freshman art/music/PE/health/religion.
Depending on your target college, many suggest having a year of bio/chem/physics. So I’d choose physics over Human Geography, and if you are not planning a STEM major, I’d think twice about doubling up on AP sciences.
Flip a coin, but I would caution you against taking 6 AP courses next year. Just because a HS offers a bunch of AP classes does not mean you need to take them all. Additionally for the Fall semester, you’ve neglected to include the hidden class : College Applications and Essays. Students always underestimate the immense amount of time this will take.
It’s one of the more challenging sciences, along with AP Chem and AP Physics C. I would not say it’s difficult, per se, but it is time consuming. In addition to the normal AP-level classwork, you need to deal with the time required for labs and lab reports. Many HS’s require double periods or before/after school time to fit in the labs.
I agree with @skieurope, you are missing physics in there.
You have taken honors or AP in all core classes, are taking 4 years of foreign language, you are fine.
I would suggest to take Honors Physics (if you never had physics, and since you already have three other AP classes (AP psych, English, Calc), and Honors Spanish IV.