<p>I'm only a sophomore so this is super early...</p>
<p>Next year I'm probably going to be taking a lot of APs but I also need to get really involved in extracurricular activities so I have to pick and choose the most important APs. These are my current rankings of most to least important - any suggestions on which ones are the most work and which ones can actually be managed?</p>
<p>-AP Calc BC (hardest class at school)
-AP English 3
-Physics H (not an AP but a hard class)
-APUSH
-AP Psych/elective
-AP Spanish 4 - don't really want to take it, but is it worth it for college?</p>
<p>They all depend on how good you are at that subject…</p>
<p>AP Calc BC is…well…math. Algebra / trig heavy (in my opinion), but you can get by with deduction and logic. Some memorization, but not too bad.</p>
<p>AP Lang (is that what 3 is?) isn’t bad if you’re good at writing in timed situations. If you’re used to writing essays and analyzing passages, this shouldn’t be too bad (my hand was super cramped each time though). Memorization of rhetoric devices, but not terrible.</p>
<p>Physics is very math heavy, but for me there were many things covered in calc that I’m now doing in physics. It makes sense to take them together, in my opinion. If you’re a math oriented person you’ll probably enjoy it.</p>
<p>APUSH is super memorization based. If you dislike history it can be awful, but if you like history (and your teacher) it’s really fun. But please note the memorization part. There’s no way to get around it.</p>
<p>AP Psych is considered fairly easy, and is generally one of those “you can self study it if you want credit” APs. (I haven’t taken it yet so I don’t have personal experience)</p>
<p>I’m not taking Spanish so I’ll let someone else do that one. It’s nice to have an foreign language AP for college but is definitely not necessary. It does depend on what colleges you’re thinking about.</p>
<p>As the user said above, it all simply depends on how good you are with the subjects.
I don’t know much about the first four classes, so I’ll give you my knowledge about the other two classes.
AP Psych is one of the easiest AP’s among with classes like AP Human Geo. I’ve been told tests are very vocabulary based, somewhat like APHG.
Spanish AP is about reading, listening, and speaking the language at a good fluent level. The difficulty will depend on how good the teacher is and how well you know Spanish. You might want to check college board to see how the collages you’re looking into will accept it. For example, MIT has a min. score requirement of 5, while UCLA’s min. is a 3. You’ll be able to skip someone language classes, and might even get college credit.</p>
<p>@LaDecimaRM @Andr01d There are three APUSH teachers at my school - two of them teach the majority of the classes, and they’re really bad. There’s one good teacher but she only teaches one section (so only around 25 kids get her). Is it worth risking a bad teacher to take it anyways?
I’m okay at Spanish right now (in Spanish 3) and my teacher, who also teaches 4AP and 5AP is not exactly the best and she has super high expectations. So is it worth maybe suffering in other classes for the AP here?</p>
<p>@realteal17: If you think you’ll be able to learn in the class and enjoy history (I would be miserable if I took it with a teacher I dislike since I’m not that huge on history) I would go for it. However do note there is A LOT of memorization–I’m okay only because I can memorize stuff right before quizzes/tests and do well on them. How do you think you would do if you got a bad teacher (grade wise)? Would you hate the class or be more neutral? </p>
<p>@Andr01d I like history but any class with a bad teacher automatically turns into a pretty bad class for me. I currently have a really good AP Euro teacher so I don’t find the class too hard, but we do a lot of the reading and actual learning on our own. Can you get a 5 on the AP exam by mostly self-studying (since the teacher is bad) though? </p>
<p>@realteal17, I took AP Lang last year self study and got a 5 even though most people say it’s a bad class to self study. So it’s possible but depends on how well you can memorize stuff, I guess (and how disciplined you are). Personally I find a lot of the topics in APUSH a repeat of what was already covered in regular US history, so I think it’s fairly easy (so far, at least), but I know many other students who say it’s hard. </p>
<p>I would look at an AP prep book and see how much you know and how hard the rest seems. If you like history and can separate the subject from the teacher it sounds like you’ll be okay. I hope you can get the teacher you like, though.</p>
<p>Sounds better than mine</p>