<p>Hello readers. Lately I've been thinking about my junior year course selections. I'm just wondering whether its up to par. My schedule is as follows: AP Biology, AP US History Ⅱ, AP Government & Politics, Honors Chemistry, Honors Spanish Ⅲ, AP Language & Composition, and Alg. 2 & Trig. I have a pretty lengthy list of ECs and lots of volunteering experience. Please comment even if you think it is bad.</p>
<p>People making these threads always act like every school is the same. We need more information. Plenty of schools don’t even offer four AP classes.</p>
<ol>
<li>What many AP courses does your school offer?</li>
<li>Which ones have you taken in previous years and which ones will you be taking in your senior year?</li>
<li>Will you take calculus before you graduate from high school, or is Algebra II & Trig followed by pre-calculus?</li>
<li>What does AP US History II mean? Does the class last for two years?</li>
</ol>
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<p>Quality > quantity, and colleges aren’t going to ask how many volunteer hours you have. Community service can be part of your EC list, but it doesn’t have to be.</p>
<p>In response to your questions:
- My school offers a total of twelve AP classes.
- My school only allows one AP class before junior year (APUSH II) and I plan on taking 4 - 6 AP classes senior year but I’m not sure about which ones to take yet.
- Algebra II & Trig. is followed by pre-calculus.
- The class does last two years.</p>
<p>8/10 AP classes out of 12 seems good, but it would be good if you could find a way to take calculus before you graduate.</p>
<p>I can most likely appeal to skip precalc but I would need some way to learn the neccessary knowledge. Or is the class not necessary to learn calculus.</p>
<p>You don’t really need pre-calc stuff to start learning calculus (it’s not an actual branch of math, just some more advanced algebra stuff they thought you should know), but that’s beside the point if you can study it somehow and then skip it. I tested out of pre-calculus by taking the final without taking the class…I still ended up with all the knowledge. There are lots of books and online resources out there.
Obviously you can get into good colleges without having calculus, but if you’re decent at math skipping pre-calc might be something to consider.</p>
<p>Do you know of anything I can use to learn the needed material?</p>
<p>Do you guys think this is a tough schedule?</p>
<p>AP French
AP English Language and Composition
AP US History
AP Biology
AP Economics
Pre-Calc/Trig</p>
<p>Google “pre-calc” and you’ll get tons and tons of results. Textbooks are good, and Khan Academy is good for a lot of stuff, but he doesn’t cover everything (for example, he doesn’t go into much detail with polar coordinates).</p>
<p>See I don’t get why people say Pre-Calc is not necessary for Calculus, to take AP Calculus at my school, not only do you have to take Pre-Calc, you have to take Honors, nobody who goes from Core Pre-Calc to AP Calc passes AP Calc at my school, and people usually say that AP Calc is easier than Pre-Calc (Honors) (I’m In Pre Calc Honors right now)</p>
<p>Anyways Depends on what college you want to go to, Unless you have extraordinary EC’s I don’t see you getting into an Ivy League School, You could get into a UC School (Assuming you have all A’s and B’s) and maybe something just below an Ivy League level. As far as Calculus goes, don’t try to feel like you have to, it will look a lot worse if you skip to Calculus and get a D or an F, rather than only having Pre-Calc and getting an A or B.</p>
<p>Knowledge of pre-calculus material is (ultimately) required for calculus, but you don’t necessarily have to sit in a classroom to learn pre-calculus or fulfill a prerequisite. </p>
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<p>This is interesting. Is there any specific reason why, other than the fact that most people aren’t getting into the Ivy League no matter what they do? The number of AP classes someone “needs” to take is dependent on how many their school offers and how many they’re allowed to take…do you think 8/12 is too few?</p>
<p>Basically, while that schedule is impressive, there’s so many people with even more impressive schedule’s that will be applying to Ivy League Schools, and he said his EC’s are good, but unless they are unusually good (Like something that stands out from the thousands of other applicant’s that apply to any Ivy League School) I don’t think his schedule is hard enough, he never specified what his “Good EC’s” are though, he has a chance if he can get maybe a 2200+ on his SAT and a 33+ on his ACT. It’s not like I’m saying he sucks if he can’t get into an Ivy League school, I’m just saying that it’s super competitive to get in, and I’ve heard of people with harder schedules and really good EC’s not get accepted into Ivy League Schools. He can get into some pretty damn good schools though, but he also never said what his GPA is, so for all we know he could be getting like C’s in most of his classes (not saying he is)</p>
<p>But it’s not just “whoever has the hardest/most impressive schedule wins.” People’s accomplishments are considered holistically, in the context of how privileged they were (because of the chance that a “diamond in the rough” could be found). If your school only offers a few AP classes, in theory you can’t be penalized for not taking more. You would be expected to somehow go above and beyond what people in your circumstances normally do, but you wouldn’t be held to the same standards as someone who goes to a school with all 34 AP classes and more extracurricular opportunities/parental connections available to them.</p>
<p>Look, Ivy Schools have about a 5% acceptance rate, 85% of the applicants are among the smartest and most accomplished High School student’s in the country, A school that offers 12 AP classes is not by any means bad, my school has only 11 (AP Bio, APES, AP Calc AB, AP Stats, AP Euro, AP US, AP Gov, AP Comp, AP Lit, AP Spanish, AP Art History but only 1 student, sometimes 2, but rarely, get accepted into an Ivy League or another top tier school) These student’s have All A’s, maybe a few B’s but a weighted GPA of around 4.3 on average. They usually take 3 AP classes sophomore year (Usually AP Euro and AP Bio, sometimes AP Art History or APES) 3-4 Junior Year and 4 more Senior year.
They usually take all but 1 or 2 of the AP’s offered. They also have a 2100 or higher on the SAT, and his problem will be that he is only in Algebra 2, which means if he is a Junior only in Algebra 2, then math isn’t his strongest subject, so he can at best get around a 630-650, which means he needs to be almost perfect on the other two to even have a chance, and it’s almost required that you get a 2100 or higher for ANYBODY to have a chance to be accepted into a top tier school.
I’m taking AP Euro this year.
AP Comp, AP Calc, AP US and APES next year
AP Stats, AP Lit, AP Spanish, AP Gov Senior Year</p>
<p>I have no plans on attending a top tier school, or even anything better than a UC school.
He has more EC’s than I do, but unless they are spectacular and unusual, other than being on the debate team and being captain of a sport’s team, or being in ASB, then he probably can’t get into Ivy’s. It’s not like he sucks or is terrible, he can get into some REALLY GOOD schools, but his classes alone are not at the same level as the average student who gets accepted into the top tier schools.</p>
<p>I’m know they’re outlandishly selective…but if the OP gets rejected (which is likely), it won’t be because he didn’t take enough AP classes. It will be because they couldn’t find a good reason to accept him. He would have been rejected even if he took all 12 AP classes, because taking a bunch of AP classes isn’t very interesting. Everyone does it. It’s just a prerequisite, and 8 or 10 out of 12 is probably enough to meet it (though I’d err on the side of 10). They’ll decide he’s okay as far as course rigor, and then they’ll look for other stuff. </p>
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<p>I took Algebra I freshman year and Linear Algebra (followed by Abstract Algebra) senior year. I got a 36 on the ACT math section. Junior year might be a little late to start moving beyond the “average” high school math track, but people can advance if they try.</p>