My high school offers early release/late arrival (ER/LA) for juniors and seniors. A normal schedule is 8 classes, and you can ER/LA either one or two classes, so you end up taking either 7 or 6 classes. Given the following schedule, what would colleges think of me doing one ER/LA in junior year of HS so I only have 7 classes? **Particularly, what would very selective colleges think??
AP English Lang
PreAP Pre-Calc
AP Physics 1
APUSH
AP Statistics
AP Chemistry
AP Spanish Language
This is an insane schedule.
Drop AP stats.
Replace AP physics 1 with honors physics, or save AP chem (one of the hardest APs there is) for senior year if you want to take AP physics1 Jr year (I’d recommend the latter).
4 APs+ pre AP precalculus is plenty. Since you should have 6 classes, the last one can be anything you’re interested in and sounds fun: choir, digital art, yearbook…
I’d recommend
LA
AP Lang
APUSH
Precalculus
AP physics 1
AP Spanish
Personal pick
ER
I agree about the insanity! What in the world would you take in the 8th slot?? 6 APs is ridiculous!
Junior year my daughter (now a freshman at Rice) took 4 APs (Stats, US History, Psych and Physics) plus two honors classes (Pre-Calc and English) and PE (required). And she definitely felt overloaded but managed to balance it.
AP chem is actually a senior year course. Taking AP physics 1 junior year and AP chemistry senior year is actually typical of the advanced stem track (alternative: AP physics C for future engineers).
AP Lang is one of the most important APs.
4 APs+ precalculus + a personal pick would make for ‘most rigorous’ schedule for the most selective colleges.
That’s odd, at my school, most AP Chem students are juniors…
Do they take AP physics 1 senior year?
No
That’s odd. What do they take?
Bio/Chem/Physics (honors or AP 1)+ 1 science AP senior year (2 at most) is very common.
Other combinations include AP Bio+APES, AP physics 1+ AP Bio.
But AP chem and AP physics C are different beasts.
I can see bio-> chem-> AP chem=> AP physics 1 too.
10th Graders at my school take PreAP Chem, and then smart people add AP Bio or AP Physics to that. 11th graders take AP Physics, smart people add AP Chem and one kid does Physics 2. 12th graders take APES, and some do Physics 2
Are your science courses not lab courses? At my kids’ school, both sciences meet 7 periods per week, so this would fill an 8 period schedule. Do you not have a Gym/Health requirement?
I think schools would find this fine. It’s rigorous enough that an additional class wouldn’t help.
If you’ve taken heavily loaded schedules with AP courses in the past, and been successful, then this is achievable. Six is abnormal, but the top handful of students at our school do it regularly.
My D just registered for a similar schedule for next year, but with AP Calc BC instead of PreCalc/Stats. Given her past success and handling of current AP’s I’m not overly concerned. I wouldn’t recommend it for most students but some with a proven history can be fine.
No, they aren’t lab courses. Yes, we have a gym requirement which I already completed.
Are you looking at any colleges at the moment? Most colleges require at minimum 2 science lab courses.