Junior Year - increased class rigor but lower GPA. Will it hurt me and should I drop class?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

I am taking all honors/AP classes my junior year:
APUSH
AP Bio
AP spanish
Honors Precalc
Honors English
Jounalism

Sophomore year I took 4 out of 5 core honors plus journalism and comp sci. My gpa unweighted was 3.92. All As and one B+ in Honors algebra2.

Freshmen year we could only take honors in spanish and math. My gpa unweighted was 4.0

This year I can already tell that I am going to have lower gpa - probably 3 classes A and 3 classes B+. The english, math and bio teachers I have are known to be very harsh. So my gpa will definitely decline and probably be just 3.75 for the year unweighted.

So each year my course rigor has increased but my gpa has declined.

I am wondering if I should drop one of the honors courses to keep my gpa up? I am interested in journalism and communications so I was thinking of dropping honors precalc.

My dream school is University of Michigan and I know they look at unweighted GPA. I have not taken ACT yet but in a diagnostic I took I scored a 33 so hoping to get 33-34.

I do not want the lower GPA to hurt me if it isn’t necessary to take all hard courses.

Any advice is appreciated!!

2

I want to go to University of Michigan as Well! They care about class rigor a lot! Dont try to protect your GPA by taking easy classes. They will definately know that you’re challenging yourself which is more important than a slightly improved GPA.

3

Keep up the rigor…that will prepare you for college. Don’t worry as much about the GPA

4

If you need 25 credits to graduate, a single letter grade drop in one class will only drop your GPA by 0.04 which really isn’t that much. Keep the rigor!

5

Keep up the rigor, keep Precalculus Honors. 3.75 is pretty good.
What are you thinking of majoring in?