<p>Every year I hear the admissions officers from Yale, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Vassar etc. come to our high school and say that you don’t have to take every AP offered, that it’s okay to take only the APs in courses that interest you. That said, I have to admit that I think they speak a bit out of both sides of their mouths. Most of the top kids at our school will take more math and science if that’s their interest, but will probably at least take APUSH and perhaps AP Econ or AP Gov or AP English as well. Similarly a kid whose orientation is more English/History will still have at least one science AP and is likely to take Calculus (at least AB). A lot is about the norms in your school - I do feel sorry for kids where the norm is 12 or more. My older son took 7, plus Linear Equations, but he’s really, really, really good at school - and never worked that hard. My younger son took 6 and that was plenty really. Even he has plenty of time to mess around.</p>
<p>My son will graduate with 10.5 AP classes under his belt. He has been accepted to U of Mich. I think it all depends on the courses your HS offers. Our HS does not offer weighted honors classes but does have the IB program, so if you are not IB you need to have a lot of AP to rank high against the IB kids. Overall, I think a student needs to be a balanced well rounded individual. Pick the EC’s that you are passionate about and stick with them for 3-4 years. (music programs, sports, tutoring, NHS, newspaper, clubs that you remained in for 4 years and are now an officer are all good ones) Admitts are really bored by the laundry list of flash in the pan resume building committments that kids submit. They really know the difference.</p>