<p>I know I have posted this a million times, but I still have not gotten any really good answers. Everytime it's either they say it's way to hard, I'm not going to have any social life or be able to do anything other than homework, or they say it's fine, and they have taken 6 AP classes and they did really well. My schedule goes like this:
1st hr: AP Chemistry
2nd hr: AP English Language and Comp.
3rd hr: AP Macro/Microeconomics
4th hr: AP Calculus AB
5th hr: Spanish III
6th hr: AP Physics B
So, once again, what do you think?</p>
<p>*Please know, my school is known for not giving a lot of homework.
*Also, AP Chemistry is an elective, so I don't have to take it.</p>
<p>I’ll second the notion that this is completely doable. In any type of situation in school, if you budget your time well, you will always have enough time for everything that you want to do.</p>
<p>Another thing that strikes me is that you say that your school doesn’t give out a lot of homework. Well, that makes it even better. Although you’ll still have to devote enough time to studying on a regular-ish basis, you’ll have plenty of time to do any ECs/have a social life.</p>
<p>Is your HS particularly competitive? I notice that the greater ability and drive of the student body tends to lead to more work in AP classes. My school is average academically, so a schedule like yours would be manageable here. But at pressure cooker top-100 schools, you might think twice about that schedule.</p>
<p>So if your school doesn’t give much homework, I say go for it.</p>
<p>It really comes down to your teachers. As long as they don’t give you too much homework, then you should be perfectly fine. If you plan on trying to get into a top college, make sure to keep up your extracurriculars but make sure grades come first. </p>
<p>If it’s any encouragement, I took 7 AP’s my senior year (Eng Lit, US Gov’t, German, Euro, Env Sci, Stat, Macro) and managed to get straight A’s. My main drive was that I knew I had to do it in order to be valedictorian, so hopefully you have a similar drive. Also, I don’t feel like I was overloaded to the point that I had no social life, so it shouldn’t be too bad for you.</p>
<p>I took 7 AP classes last year, and one of them was independent study. This is a list of my classes and the scores I got on the AP exam:
AP English Lit - 5
AP US Government - 4
AP Microeconomics - 4
AP Calculus AB - 5
AP Spanish Language - 5
AP Physics C Mech (independent study) - 4
AP Computer Science A - 5</p>
<p>It is completely doable. The only hard part was the stress when they all decided to assign projects at the same time. But that’s it. Exam week was tiring, but it is completely doable. Don’t even worry.</p>
<p>^ I really hate how teachers randomly “decide” to assign projects all at the same time. I swear that they all go to a meeting and deviously plan bad things…</p>
<p>~What has been the rigor of your schedule in the past?
~How many AP classes have you taken simultaneously?
~How difficult are the teachers in your school?
~How qualified are the teachers in your school? Do they usually prepare their students for 4s or 5s on the AP exams with minimal studying, or are the classes basically self-studying because your teachers either don’t teach well or are too easy?
~How motivated are you?
~What are your study habits?
~Are you a major procrastinator?
~Do you tend to need to study a lot regularly, only before exams, or never?</p>
<p>I haven’t read your other threads, but the reason you get varied answers is because every school and every student is different. Generally, AP Class X is easy and just requires memorization, and AP Class Y is difficult and requires mastery of every topic and lots of practice, studying, and dedication. This is a generalization, though. You can’t get a straight answer. It depends on the factors above (which you should think about, not actually answer in this thread) and other factors I can’t think of at the moment. I know some students can handle having every class being an AP class, while others feel overwhelmed with more than one. I know this isn’t the answer you want, but it is what it is. I wish you the best of luck. Study hard. Try to keep your social life in tact. Pass your AP exams. :)</p>
<p>That schedule is wayyy too hard man. look, you need to take most likely (mean) gpa you will receive in schedule x, and multiply that by the difficulty rating of that schedule, which is a measure of its potential worth (this could simply be a linear function of the number of AP’s in it, molded appropriately to the individual) to obtain the value of the schedule. And you need to maximize that function over all possible schedules. </p>
<p>And I can tell you, just by looking at the schedule you’ve provided, that that is not the optimal schedule for you. Not even close.</p>
<p>I’m taking 5 APs next year as well. I don’t think you should be worried if your school doesn’t give too much homework; just make sure you don’t slack!! I’m unlucky though, I a couple of teachers who are apparently notorious for giving insane tests and homework…:[ But if you give yourself a good incentive, like mine is that I need to get a better GPA and class rank, you can do it. I also took a lot of APs last year with famously hard teachers (within the school of course!) and I ended up only getting 1 B. It’s all about how you manage your time. (but then again…you could say i had no life last year!)</p>
<p>Remember what grammar girl said but here’s what I heard:
AP calc:Math is always more about difficulty then busy work
AP Chem & Physics: Mostly note taking
AP Micro/Marco…no clue whatsoever
AP Lang: If our schools are the same, the workload is max in this class.</p>
<p>Is it impossible? No. But you have to devote incredible amounts of time to it and will have to spend less time with your friends (not to say it will destroy your social life). Also, difficulty doesn’t always come from workload; Chem, Physics, and Calc are hard hard concepts.</p>