<p>So I'm a sophomore in high school right now. Today, we got our student transcripts as of first marking period this year, and my class rank is number 7. My mom was very disappointed with my rank, and wanted me to drop my orchestra class (which counts as a standard class towards my GPA) in favor of another AP class to boost my class rank. However, my brother, who worked as a college admissions consultant for a year, believes I should stick with orchestra, because I need to take it in order to be able to continue participating in musical activities such as Maryland All-State Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Side-By-Side. He says this will make me a more interesting candidate for colleges.
My question is this: how does continuing to take orchestra in order to be a more interesting college applicant compare to taking another AP class and raising my GPA and class rank? Is there a substantive difference between a class rank of 7 and a class rank of 3? I'm also worried that in the coming 2 years, more and more people will take more AP classes and get higher class ranks than I do, thus pushing me down even further. I already take all of the AP classes that I can and I get the highest GPA that I can with those classes.</p>
<p>So my brother has some new advice regarding this situation. He’s telling me to drop my school orchestra class, but to continue playing in my weekly youth orchestra. Since I’ve taken school orchestra the first 2 years of high school and done everything that I can possibly do with it at least once, one more year of orchestra before college applications will have less value than taking more APs and getting GPA and rank up.</p>
<p>What classes would you be taking as AP in place of that and what would your expected GPA boost be? If it’s something significantly difficult or STEM related (AP Physics B/C, AP Chemistry, AP Statistics, etc) that shows a lot of effort and you think you might be able to pull off an A in it, maybe your mother is right. If you’re taking a class like AP Psychology, AP Environmental Science, etc, I’d still recommend sticking in Orchestra V.</p>
<p>Will you be able to get All-State without School Orchestra? If you’re only able to get All-State while performing with the school as a class, I would highly recommend that you keep Orchestra V.</p>
<p>I’m not an admissions officer, but I would rather see someone with one less AP class but a passion for something (music) than another full AP zombie.</p>