I am a rising junior who is planning to go into premed and most likely major in chemistry.
I have taken both honors bio and chem in freshman and sophomore year, and I have done very well in them with high As in both. I plan to take AP chemistry and regular physics junior year, and then AP biology and APES senior year. The reason why I’m not wanting to do AP physics 1 is because the AP physics department at my school is horrible, with most students getting 1s or 2s on the AP exam. The class itself isn’t easy either, which will make getting an A difficult as well. The other 3 ap sciences I mentioned above usually have very high AP scores at my school, and very good teachers. I keep hearing that you should take AP physics for premed, but I don’t know if I really want to because of the bad rep at my school. Is AP chemistry, AP biology, and APES enough for preparing for pre-med and a chemistry major? I might possibly self-study AP Physics if it really is important.
You should be fine. S17 took AP physics from an awful teacher and learned nothing. He got A’s but didn’t learn. He would have been better in regular physics. Fast forward to college and he got one of the highest grades in physics I and II. Now he will be doing his second year as an LA (undergrad TA). So yes you will be fine as long as you aren’t trying to get into tippy top schools.
With pre-med as a goal, AP in Bio and Chem and any level of Physics should be a fine science portfolio (assuming you’re not trying to get into Hopkins or Harvard).
Even for Hopkins or Harvard or [insert some other college here}, the plan is fine. There is no expectation from any college that AP Physics 1 be taken or that all 3 of the key sciences be AP.
No college is impressed by self study. Your plan is fine.
There should probably be a sticky thread here, “self-study” → “bad”. What you really want to do as a future pre-med as to “over-study” or “study ahead” or “prepare yourself academically”, or some combination, including regular old “study”. The usual pre-med trick for getting 'A’s in college is to retake classes for which they had the same material in HS, and it would be in your best interests to think along those lines. For you with HS Physics, that should probably mean trying to be the best-motivated student that Physics teacher has ever seen. Totally learn everything there is to learn about HS Physics, and that should be enough. Do the same with college Physics when you get there, and all your other classes too.
It’s not that it’s “bad;” it’s just that, for most students applying to colleges that evaluate holistically, the ROI is, IMO, low. There are valid reasons to self study if it can be fit in, but impressing colleges is not one of them.