should i be worried? i will only be allowed to take 4 ap’s in total, since this year (sophomore) i wasn’t able to take any.
the cap is 2 per year
Colleges will take into account whether you are taking the most rigorous courseload available at your school. They will not hold it against you if you only take 2 if that is the limit. Frankly, I wish my son’s school had a limit on APs - too many is a lot of work and pressure.
They can’t stop you from taking it online or taking dual enrollment classes if you pay for it.
Your GC will send a School Profile to the colleges you apply to that explains things like this.
Like others say, they evaluate you in the context of your school.
I love that my son’s school limited the number of AP’s to avoid the arms race of escalating numbers of APs. As others have pointed out, you will be evaluated in the context of your school BUT I will add some caveats to that. First, decide which classes are the most important to you. In my son’s case, he chose mostly science and math APs, because that’s what he’s most interested in. Because of the cap, he didn’t need to worry about taking things like APUSH, which would have taken a lot of time and aren’t particularly in his areas of interest. (For those, he did the honors classes instead) This gave him more free time to enhance his application (he did some engineering projects at a maker space, did an online NASA class, etc). So, I would say use the APs that you have wisely to show your interests AND make use of your free time to further develop those interests. To me, that is a much better application than just collecting a laundry list of APs for the sake of doing APs.
They have that cap for a reason.
They’re trying to give you the chance to be a high school student before you’re a college student. To have the time for extra-curriculars. To have the time to develop interests outside the classroom. To have time for your family. To have time to learn to develop relationships with people.To have time to work if you so choose. To have time for sports. To have time to simply BE.
They are not the enemy. They’re attempting to save you from yourself.
I think that an AP cap of 2 is a very good idea. I think that all high schools should do this. It would be even better if top universities would all announce that they will consider anything over 4 APs total as equivalent to exactly 4 APs total.
I wouldn’t worry about it. As others have said very well, “they evaluate you in the context of your school”.