Junior Year Schedule (AP Physics and Extra Class?)

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Hi everyone,

so I’m planning my schedule for junior year and I’m running into some issues. My first one is deciding which AP Physics to take; I’m going to do AP Calc BC (currently in honors pre-calc and honors chem) but if I took physics I would be jumping into it without any calculus background…keeping this in mind, would it be a poor decision to take AP Physics C? At my school, we have to take Physics 1 before we can take physics 2, so I feel like I would be wasting less time if I jumped straight to C but I don’t want to completely die in the class; my goal would be to get a 4-5 on the ap test.

My other dilemma is that I’ve already fulfilled my art + PE + foreign language requirements, so I will have an extra class. I wanted to do lab assistance or internship, but I have been told that it would look better on my transcript to take an academic class than to have either of these as part of my schedule (this applies more to UC schools from what I understand - my problem is that I don’t know if I want to apply to a UC or a private school in the future? My dream school puts a lot of emphasis on recommendation letters but my other dream school is UC Berkeley…so I’m kind of conflicted here on what I should do :frowning: I’m trying to make my schedule as competitive as possible. I feel like doing internship or lab assistance would be nice since they are like an open period, but I also don’t want them to negatively affect my applications…

So far I have:

AP Chem
AP Lang
AP Calc BC
APUSH
AP Physics ___
Empty

I hope this isn’t too confusing and everyone understands what I mean.

2

Physics C Mechanics or EM? If Mechanics, go for it. There’s some Calculus, but you’ll learn that quickly in either the class itself or in Calc BC. Not sure about EM.

If possible, I would suggest continuing the foreign language in some way. I would suggest an academic class too.

3

If, by fulfilling your foreign language requirement, you mean 2 years or less, I would take another year of foreign language.

Most people who take Physics C do so taking calculus at the same time. It’s fine.

4

thanks guys, I think I’ll go ahead with physics C mechanics then :slight_smile:

I took AP Spanish freshman year, and the spanish literature class is a nightmare at my school; the AP test looks like a nightmare as well, so I think I’ll be good without that class.

I’ll try and find another academic course if I don’t see any internships worth my time.