So I’ve decided to graduate a year early. I’m in 10th grade right and I have to plan my courses for the rest of my high school career. Right now in 10th grade I’m taking:
AP US History
AP Human Geography
ACP Honors Chem 1
Advanced English 10
Precalculus/ Trig Regular
Ceramics 1/2
Spanish 2
Next year my senior/junior I plan on taking two english courses and spanish 3 over the summer. Here are my choices:
AP Statistics
AP Biology
AP English 11
AP English 12
AP Environmental Science
AP Macro/ AP Gov
Personal Finance/ Peer Mentoring
Please tell if I these are good enough for course rigor. I plan on attending Notre Dame. Will this be too many courses for me one in year? I plan on going into a science major.
Oh dear…six…SEVEN APs? Are you sure? I think you mean University of Notre Dame, right? In which case, year, that is a VERY heavy and achieving load.
I won’t ask why you want to graduate a year early, but I really don’t think you’ll be able to cover all of those APs and score a 4 or 5 on all of them (from what I know from other people’s experiences anyway). Personally, I don’t think it’s really necessary to take TWO English APs in a year if you plan on majoring in science, it doesn’t seem practical. Maybe you could reduce those to Honors classes?
Unless the science major you are considering has to do specifically with Environmental Science, you may want to drop APES and replace it with something a little easier. From what I’ve heard, it’s a lot of work for something that may just end up as a GE credit in college, and AP Bio is already pretty rigorous by itself.
Thanks for the info. At my school it’s either regular English 12 or ap English 12 so that’s why I thought I could take it. I mean I could try regular English 12 next year but I don’t know if it’ll look impressive.
And at my school I want to take APES becaise it’s an easier class and mostly busy work as most say. I also want to be at the top of ther class so I want it as a GPA booster.
WHY are you planning on graduating early and trying to cram so many AP courses into the next 2 years?? whats the hurry?
This plan of yours is a recipe for a GPA disaster, which will sink your dreams for going to ND.
SLOW down, take 4 years, and give your self to graduate with a top GPA and strong LOR’s.
I understand what your saying but my GPA is a 4.1 right now. I’ve decided on this as my new schedule.
AP statistics
AP Bio
AP Macro/ AP gov.
AP English 11
World lit/comp
Ap psychology
Personal finance/peer mentoring
I think this will be a much better schedule for me to handle in my senior/junior year. I want to graduate early because I wanna get a head start on my college careers. I have three extra curriculars and next year I plan on joining NHS.
Have you talked to your guidance counselor about graduating early? I’m pretty sure (but not completely sure) that most colleges/universities require minors to live with their parents? (Although I don’t really know…)
Anyways, how does your school weight GPA, and how is your GPA unweighted?
I don’t suggest graduating early, being a year early is not beneficial in the long run, if you could continue with your current schedule into senior year, that would be roughly 2/3 more APs and the chance to improve SAT or ACT scores.
I’ve changed my mind about graduating a year early. Our GPA is out of a 5.0 scale. Anyway I live by the University of notre dame so I would just drive there. I think I’ll graduate a semaster early as it would seem easier then graduating a year early. I’ve already spoken with my counselor and she said it would be hard just as long as I have enough credits. I’m going for the academic honors diploma.
@Underamourz201 So is it that all clases are graded on a 5.0 scale or is it that you have the capability of getting a 5.0 in certain classes such as AP or Honor classes.
Even if you graduate a semester early, I think it’s doubtful that ND would let you start your Freshman year during the Spring semester. Which would then lead to the question, if you graduate early, what would you do during the second semester of your senior year?
We had a friend of the family that graduated a year early from high school. Part of her thinking was that colleges and universities would be more impressed by that achievement. She said that the schools that she was interested in had ZERO interest in the fact that she graduated early. She said if she had it do over again, she would’ve went all four years in high school.
Graduating early will NOT help you. It’s not like adcoms are going to think “Oh wow, this 17 year old is so much more mature and experienced, has accomplished so much more than our 18 year old applicants”. They’ll go “If s/he thinks he should be treated as if 18 with 4 years of HS, s/he will”, end of story.
I agree with menloparkmom that your current plan is a recipe for disaster. What you SHOULD do is look into the dual-enrollment rules for your school, and take some of your senior year classes at the college (community college is fine, especially if it has a guaranteed transfer plan with ND and you take classes guaranteed to transfer, meaning that they’r pre-approved as being rigorous enough.)
What’s your unweighted GPA (ie., where A= 4)? That’s what ND will use.
If you want to study any STEM field, whether at ND or elsewhere, you’ll need to take calculus, so drop AP Stats from that plan.Also, you need one each of chem, bio, and physics, plus one of these at AP level. ND will expect level 3-4 in a foreign language.
Suggestions
10th
AP US History
AP Human Geography
ACP Honors Chem 1
Advanced English 10
Precalculus/ Trig Honors
Ceramics 1/2
Spanish 2
11th
AP Calculus AB
AP Chem
AP Macro/ AP gov.
AP English 11
Spanish 3
Elective (perhaps intro to CS? AP CS Principles?)
Personal finance/peer mentoring
12th
Semester 1
Dual-enrollment Calculus 2
Dual-enrollment freshman English
Dual-enrollment Anthropology, History, Sociology…
Dual-enrollment Spanish 3 [note that College Spanish 3= HS Spanish 4]
You can add one HS-level elective class (Metalwork, current events, theater tech…). Advantage: you only have 2-3 classes a day which frees up time for essay-writing.
Semester 2
Dual-enrollment General Physics, algebra-based
Dual-enrollment Economics
Dual-enrollment Statistics
Dual-enrollment Philosophy (several classes required at ND, so taking an approved CC class will help you a lot)
Dual-enrollment “whatever strikes your fancy”
If your school doesn’t have the option to do DE (like my school ) you could take a whole lot of APs and honors. Try balancing out your APs in all four (or three) years of high school.
There is NO point in graduating a semester early…why would you even want to graduate early?
Thanks for all the info guys. I think that staying for all 4 years is a better idea then graduating early. I wanted to graduate early because by the time I would start college I would be 19 because I was born at the beginning of my class. I couldn’t take ap Chem like that because at my school it’s a double blocked class so it takes up two periods. Oh and BTW where would my 12th grade English class fit into the schedule. I like what you suggested. So pretty much my senior year would mostly be dual enrollment courses. I would rather take AP biology and ap physics 1 rather than ap Chem as I am not the best at Chem honors. I have an A but it’s a hard A.
For the dual enrollment would that be like at a local college like Ivy Tech or an university like Indiana University Northwest. The nearest university near me.
Ask your GC - if your HS has an agreement it’s typically with the closest community college (likely your county’s IvyTech) but if IU Northwest is closer, the HS may have agreements with it instead of IvyTech.
) you could take a whole lot of APs and honors. Try balancing out your APs in all four (or three) years of high school.