Hello!
I’m currently having trouble with deciding what classes to take junior and senior year. I am currently a sophomore doing relatively well in one AP class (APWH) planning on focusing on chemistry or biology in college.
Junior:
AP Lang
AP Calc AB
AP Bio
AP USH
AP Spanish Lang
Senior:
AP Lit
AP Calc BC
AP Chem
AP Gov/Microecon
For the elective spots, I have the choices of:
- AP Psychology - not very interested in the course; offered during the summer @ local community college so probably won’t take it.
- AP Stats - I'm interested in the course as I love mathematics; I'm not very good at probability so taking the course could help me; offered at local community college.
- AP Physics 1 - I don't really enjoy physics, the teacher is really scary and apparently most people fail. However, colleges do want to see physics on the transcript...not offered at community college.
- AP Environmental - I love environmental studies (done green generation in Science Olympiad for the past two years, water quality three years ago) and the teacher is amazing (I had him for Biology). However, the main thing I'm concerned about is that APES would look worse on the transcript compared to AP Physics.
- AP Comp Sci A/Principles (required) - I haven't fulfilled the Computer Literacy requirement for my school, so a computer science course (or ICT Foundations, stated below) is required before I graduate.
- Band - I did band freshman and sophomore year. It takes up roughly 24 (painful) hours every week during marching season and 7ish hours during concert (not including class time, which is an additional 6 hours). We are required to do marching band ;-; which I absolutely detest with a passion, but concert band is really fun and I enjoy playing music and doing concerts (but not marching or football games or anything to do with marching band) and the teacher is a terribly harsh grader. I do have an option of taking ICT Foundations (a basic computer science class that would allow me not to take APCS) one semester and band the next, but then I technically wouldn't have done four years of band. Would that have an effect on my admissions?
If I choose to do band or ict foundations/band junior year, then I’m practically signing up for band senior year, since I wouldn’t want to do band for three years and then quit my fourth year.
If I had to rank these classes in terms of what I would prefer to do:
- Environmental
- Stats
- APCS/ICT (doesn’t really matter as either one is required)
- Physics
- Psychology
- Band (although I reckon it would look better than an additional AP class, though I hate it so much).
I want to have a competitive transcript for college admissions; at the same time, I don’t want to take classes that I hate. What should I choose for the four elective spots? I want to take academic courses that interest me; however, I don’t want to seem like a student overloading on AP classes just for the sake of it (which is a concern that other people have told me about taking all APs). I would think Band would be the best choice for two of the slots, but at the same time, I hate marching band with a passion (almost got an B first semester for messing up on play tests) and would gladly transfer out of the course if it wasn’t for college admissions