<p>I'm doing 10 (or 11, depends if I think I can survive lol). We can't take AP's Frosh/Soph years so I'm doing 4 Junior and 6/7 Senior. Yeah its hard, but hey, you get a kickass GPA for your work. However, your school is not an anomaly. Look at the US News rankings of high schools (based on amount of AP's taken per student on average). Our school, ranked 70th int he US, had an average of like 3. Only the #1 had like an average of 10. So no, your school is totally fine.</p>
<p>Spooky, that's how my school is. I think I'm taking the most (not counting those who take the double APs - macro/micro econ usgov/compgov) at 5 - and my peers think I'm nuts.</p>
<p>Most are only taking one or two. History and possibly calc. My school offers like 30 AP's but it's literally impossible to take more than 12 because of required core classes, and the fact that all AP Sciences are the same period (70 minute class as opposed to the normal 45)</p>
<p>My school's policy is that a student can't take more than 2 in one year without approval from the headmaster's office (i.e. academic dean).</p>
<p>most of the advanced curriculum classes at my school are year long courses. One can take 6 classes per semester. This limits our ability to take many AP classes considering they offer no AP classes for freshman and only 1 for sophmores. The only AP classes that are semester long at my school are AP macro econ, AP micro econ, AP comp gov, and AP US gov. That being said in theory the maximum number of AP classes a kid can take at my school(assuming they have done required classes over the summer and are advanced in every category) is 15 and thats assuming one takes comp/us/macro/micro. This also assumes the kid did not take a foreign language AP(in that case the maximum would only be 14 since foreign language AP's are not open to juniors). Now I managed 4 years of foreign language(no AP though) and I will graduate with 12 AP classes and about 13 or 14 AP tests(already have taken 6). I tried my hardest to challenge myself as much as possible after a relatively easy freshman schedule.</p>
<p>Most kids at my school do not even take this many because of our schools idiotic required courses(personal fitness, humanities course, Health, political science, physics, econ...etc). Many times our teachers are too lazy to even make sure kids are put into the AP classes that they are supposed to recommend the student for causing the kid instead to be placed in intro to cooking or something... Overall it is a pain in the ass with scheduling, freshman/sophmore restrictions and graduation requirements to get a lot of AP's. </p>
<p>Most kids do not even consider it a reality at my school to consider 6 AP's and certainly not 13. I blame this on the counseling department.</p>
<p>Id also like to point out that the concept of "self study" for AP is also pretty rare to find at my school. When I was a lazy sophmore(real lazy) I remember seeing a genius senior come in every day and self study AP Euro with my AP world teacher(AP euro wasnt offered that year). At the time I though he was insane in doing it and so did everyone else. Well then I discovered CC and I self studied Human Geography and made a 5. When I told my counselor that I wanted to self study it she asked me over and over if I was prepared... I told her I was and she just said that it isnt really common for self study at my school. I kind of attribute this to the concept that most people have lives... but once again I think the counseling department should at least tell the kids that they have that option.</p>
<p>At my son's catholic school, AP courses are not in abundance and with required religion and (early on) gym courses, there wasn't much room. If you wanted to take band/chrous, you also used up a slot. Next year, they are going to trimesters to add a lot of time, but it wont effect my son. I also feel that they gear their suggestions/counseling to the greater group of kids. They have their share of Ivy bound kids, but most don't go to the top 15. SAT ll's are barely mentioned in talks, and when I asked why, I was told that most schools don't need them and if they do, they address it. If you're "college savvy" it's fine, but if you're green, you have to be more pro-active.</p>