<p>I am having sort of a serious scheduling issue. I am currently going into my junior year, which gave me the choice of take AP Am History of IB History of the Americas. From my understanding, taking IB would help my writing, cultural literacy, and give me a better look at college level work. While I realize the rigor of these programs at your school may differ, but at mine, the majority of students say the IB course is more challenging, but valuable.</p>
<p>However, I just received my junior year schedule and was disappointed to see I didn't have an elective. It turns out both journalism and IB are held only once a day, but during the same period. Currently, I hold a leadership position and will next year in Journalism, which also is one of my major extracurrics. So, as it stands, I can either: (a) Not take an elective (journalism), so I can take the IB class which I want (b) take journalism and take and AP Am History, or (c) take IB, drop journalism, and try to pick another elective like AP Euro or shop. </p>
<p>Also, I am trying to make my schedule as appealing as possible for college admissions officers. I hope to apply to many of the highly ranked schools, so if any of these choices would help or hurt me, please note. Additionally, happiness isn't a factor, since I would feel comfortable in any of these scenarios.</p>
<p>Look at the websites of the schools you want to go to and see what credit they offer for IB HOA vs APUSH. That will give you an idea of how they value the courses relative to one another.</p>
<p>My only issue with geomom's strategy is that many of the pie in the sky schools I am interested offer little to no credit either way. Thus, it's hard to evaluate based on that.</p>
<p>If you're not going for the full IB Diploma, or if the class would be an extra subject, I would probably say AP, just due to its greater popularity in the US (and the fact that you're more likely to get credit for it, whether this is warranted due to greater difficulty of not, which varies from class to class). However, I am a big fan of the IB Diploma, so if this would make the difference between you getting that or not, I would take the IB.</p>
<p>I’d rather you keep the position because I’ve tried maintaining active participation for my school newspaper outside the journalism class, and it was/is very difficult to do. Keep the position, stay in the class, and take AP.</p>