Self-study an for an AP test or take the course online

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Hey guys!

I’m a sophomore in high school and I’m new here. I was wondering if any of you guys had some advice for me, basically there are a couple courses that I want to take outside of school(my school only offers like 9 or 10 APs or something like that), and with the exception of APUSH and AP US Gov, which I know I’m going to take online because I need the social studies credit to graduate, but dont want ot take at school because I would have to sacrifice APs that I actually care about, like science ones cause I wanna go into science, and we just have the regular course for us gov. Anyway, for courses like AP Psych,(which i’ve already signed up for online but only did so last week and still have two weeks to opt out if i dont want to do it), AP Env Sci, AP human geo, and AP comp sci, none of which my school has, do you guys think it would be better to take them online, which would be good mainly because it would give me another weighted grade, or self study them, which has obvious benefits like being completely self paced(not self paced like the online courses that say 'self-paced!" but really required a minimum amount of work every week, and is a ton less work and I can learn about it my own way.

So basically at this point it has just boiled down to which looks better on a college resume- a couple online AP courses, which would bring a higher grade, or self-studying which would bring less work, would be truly self paced and allow me more freedom in learning. which do you guys think is more impressive.? studing all on your own or taking an additional course outside of school? I’m leaning toward self-studiyng just cause I dont think I could fit any into my schedule right now and an actual course would be a lot harder and I could prb only do one at a time,unless I quit out of ECs and stuff, but would help my grade. However I could do multiple ones at a time if I self-studied so i couldnt decide and i figured theres literally no better group of people to ask about something like this than the college confidential peeps. So what do you guys think?

2

Hello,

I think that self studying can be more convenient if you have the motivation to actually pull it off. Psych, Enviro Sci and HG are mostly theoretical courses. I doubt a teacher or an instructor will really be that beneficial. As for CS, you may require some help and so I advice you take the online course.

However, if you think an increase in average will really be helpful for you, go ahead and take an additional course. Keep in mind that if you do bad or can’t cope, your grades may suffer in the end as you have more workload.

3

For colleges? They are not impressed by self studying. Take however many online that you can reasonably fit in.

4

it depends on which subjects you are good at, but i’d say self-study as much as possible in subjects you are relatively confident in, as courses take up much more time and are significantly harder/more annoying. basically, if you think the course would mostly be busy work for you and you could learn everything by yourself, then self-study. then, load up on more advanced courses or electives, or be like me and have 70% of your day empty.

for instance, i self-studied AP CompSci (missed a MC question… no perfect), AP Statistics (missed a point somewhere… probably since i spent most of the time writing a treatise on projective geometry and making up a problem set for the grader), and AP Physics (made a few mistakes… racing a USAPhO camper is not a very good idea), but took classes for AP US History and AP Lang since i was not as confident in those areas.