<p>I've just finished my freshman year and I was wondering how rigorous my planned set of classes are. Here goes..</p>
<p>9th grade (already completed):
English 9 G/T (GATE; gifted education program, weighted, honors) (B+/A-)
Algebra 3/4 / Trig G/T (<em>second</em> year algebra and accelerated trig in one) (A-, A-)
Engineering Physics 1/2 (my school has an engineering program that leads students into FIRST Robotics; not honors) (A-, A-)
Adv. Jazz Band (A, A)
Spanish 3/4 (A-, A)
Marching Band 1st semester (A)
regular non-sport PE 2nd semester (A)</p>
<p>10th grade:
English 10 G/T
Precalc 1/2 G/T (no such thing as second year precalc of course)
Engineering 1/CompSci 1 (the engineering thing for sophmores; this DOES NOT COUNT FOR SCIENCE CREDIT)
AP World History (AP, like GATE and IB, is weighted as '5' at our school)
Spanish 5/6</p>
<h2>PE</h2>
<p>tests:
PSAT
maybe SAT/ACT
AP</p>
<p>11th grade:
AP English Language or English 110/111 (a community college course offered on campus; both are weighted at our school)
Calculus 150/160 (another weighted CC course at our HS)
AP Physics
APCS
AP Spanish</p>
<h2>AP US History</h2>
<p>PSAT again
SAT/ACT
SAT II
AP</p>
<p>12th grade:
AP English Lit. or English 110/111
Calculus 200/250 (mutivariable calc and linear algebra)
Adv. Engineering Physics (supplement to FIRST robotics)
Gov. AP/Health
Biology (AP?)
Micro/Macroecon AP</p>
<h2>FIRST Robotics</h2>
<p>another SAT if I screw up
more subject exams if time allows
AP</p>
<p>Aside from the 'rigor' question, I would appreciate it if someone would give me some suggestions on which classes to cut (I sorta want to take a chem class).</p>
<p>You may want to cut AP CS… because AB is being dropped everywhere after next year… AP CS A doesn’t always grant very much credit. AP Chem would be a better choice imo. </p>
<p>Let’s put it like this: If this is near or is the most rigorous schedule in your school… you’re fine. Understand they’ll always be people taking more honors and more AP classes than you and making higher grades–fact of life. </p>
<p>For instance I attend a school without APs… I take them for free online. I had 6 honors, 1 AP class this year + 2 required standard my freshman year. I ended up with 9 credits… 1-3 other people in my school ended with 7-- the rest ended this year with 6 credits. From the looks of it, I made higher grades than you did too.
For my sophomore year I will have 2-4 APs (including AP Cal BC and AP Physics), 1 req Standard, and 5 honors classes–including dual enrollment.
Does this matter? No. What you’ve done is considered in relation to your school. Databox (CC user) has a better schedule than me. (props to him) </p>
<p>You just have you realize that “There will always be those that are better or worse than you are in something.”</p>
<p>Anyways, yeah, as long as you take the hardest courses offered, it’s fine. I just finished freshman, not too many honors offered here, but took the best I can. </p>
<p>It’s really not about the amount of honors/AP courses that you take, I know plenty of people that get in to top schools with taking just like 4 AP’s throughout their high school.</p>
<p>OP, feel free to email some schools that you have some interest in to going for college (state school, MIT, etc.). All will tell you (at least in my experience) that it will be very valuable to take chemistry. All of my friends in engineering programs across the country have to take chemistry in college. It is in your best interest to fit in Chemistry and Biology if you want to do science/engineering.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is using AP credits to get you out of intro classes in college. I have friends who were able to pass out of annoying intro classes because they did well on AP exams. As an engineer, that will give you a lot more flexibility your first few years at school while most of your peers will be trying to get on track for physics and math. The classes that will get you out of these requirements are AP Physics C, AP Calc BC, and AP Chem and maybe AP CS AB. AP Spanish is good to get out of your language requirement, which can be rough at some colleges (mine is 4 semesters). AP Econ can get you out of intro econ classes, and minoring in econ/business seems to be popular among engineers (my intro econ classes are full of them). </p>
<p>To make room in your schedule, I’d either not take math senior year, take summer school in something this summer or next summer (like health), or try to shuffle other stuff around. Also, if you end up at a top college, you might not get credit for community college classes, but the school will have an infrastucture set up for accepting AP credit. One of my friends had to fight to get math credit from UWisconsin. Another had to fight to get econ credit from BC.</p>
<p>Honestly I have no idea why some colleges do not accept community college credit. It’s even stranger when they make it difficult to accept credit from other top colleges (or not at all). However, that is what the colleges choose to do.</p>
<p>One reason might be that they truly feel that their class is tougher. At Caltech you can get a 5 on the BC exam and still place into the lowest math class. I can also tell you that my year of chemistry in college was a lot tougher and taught me more stuff than my year of AP Chem.</p>
<p>Many times they want your money. For instance Duke will accept credit from Harvard Secondary unless you took the class before your junior year. It’s not like the class changed. -_-</p>
<p>However, I do believe that a lot of courses are just not up to par at community colleges. My state directs any course at a college below the level of 300 to be weighted as honors, anything below 100 to be standard and anything above 300 to be AP weighted. No community college in my state offers a 300 level class, ironically a lot of universities will call the same class a 300 level class. (CC Calculus III=272 Local University Calculus III=300)</p>
<p>But for all the PC we would like… CC’s aren’t meant to be equal to university. Someone I know was coerced into writing paper for a community college student while he or she was in middle school–the paper always got A’s.</p>