I am an incoming freshman but I really want to try for State AP Scholar (California). I laid out a four-year plan to take about 26 AP classes… but I still don’t know if it would be enough? Especially in California… I will have to study some of them so I was wondering what you guys thought. I really don’t think I would have a problem in most of these AP classes… I’ve taken the SAT in 7th grade and got a 2200.
(s) is for self-study, everything else are school classes
9th:
AP Environmental Science (s)
AP Psychology (s)
AP Human Geography (s)
AP World History
10th:
AP European History (s)
AP Art History (s)
AP Music Theory (s)
AP US History
AP Calculus AB/ AP Calculus BC
AP Chemistry
11th:
AP English Language and Composition (s)
AP Comparative Government and Politics (s)
AP American Government
AP Statistics
AP Physics 1
AP Biology
AP Spanish Language
12th:
AP Computer Science (s)
AP English Literature and Composition
AP Microeconomics/ AP Macroeconomics
AP Physics C Electricity and Magnetism/ AP Physics C Mechanics
AP Physics 2
AP Spanish Literature
Why? It is IMO, an award nobody cares about, except the recipient. Additionally, you will not have the State Scholar Award in time for college applications.
You cannot take both the Calc AB and Calc BC exams in the same year.
Really? You’re not even in HS yet, so it’s a bit naive of you even attempt to make that statement. At this point, you don’t know how much you do not know.
If you’re doing this for college admissions, be aware that college admissions are not impressed with self study. There want you to take the most challenging curriculum that is offered within your HS.
Get through your freshman year. Then come back and ask the question.
I agree with @skieurope; colleges don’t care about self studied classes. It just shows that you’re AP junkie, and colleges generally stay away from that group. They want to see you do better in your free time. You’ll have a dry application if all that’s on it is your AP’s. It’s better to excel in your EC’s, make an impact in your community, and actually be a person and enjoy high school than self-study. Self studying and State Scholar proves absolutely nothing and impresses no one. The only reason you should self-study is if you are interested in the course material and want college credit (AND the course is not offered at your school). AP’s are not the answer to Ivy League.
Your SAT score is irrelevant as to if you could handle an AP class. A single test score proves nothing.
If you’re not taking AP classes or tests for your own enjoyment or because you want to be challenged, your high school will be hell. @pinklinks is right: Enjoying your high school experience is much more important. Maybe it’s not what colleges are looking for, but high school is part of the exploratory sequence, followed by college. Those few years of your life are the best time to explore things - whether academic, athletic, musical, or community-based, and you should take the opportunity to do so! If you really want to take this many AP classes, I wish you the best of luck.
Now you are just crazy. I’m pretty sure sure you won’t even have the time to balance your self-study + regular classes HW + AP classes HW. Hell, you won’t even have the time to prep for standardize testing and doing EC’s. You’re app is just gonna be a bunch of ap classes and probably them ap scholar awards lol.
This is a really bad idea. Why would you want to devote 4 years of your life, your entire irreplaceable hs career, to an award that no one cares about? Can’t you recognize a marketing ploy when you see one? The college board is trying to discourage kids from opting out of taking AP exams with this assortment of "awards’ which are basically for paying to take the exams. It’s just plain stupid to try to take all the APs and if I saw an application like that I’d throw it in reject because honestly it speaks worlds about you if that is the kind of thing that is most important to you. Develop some real interests that aren’t taking more exams than the other guy and enjoy high school, you only get to do it once.
A state AP Scholar of CA went to my HS with 20 5’s so maybe 26 is a bit much? (And a perfect SAT score and being the valedictorian to go along with it). He self-studied I’d say ~4 even though the school offered a few of the courses but he wanted to learn the stuff ahead of time…
–His philosophy is to BS the work the teachers give you / finish them faster than the teachers can give it out and you’ll have plenty of time for extracurriculars and friends. My AP Bio teacher still has his example of turning in a 8.5*11" piece of paper with pencil drawings and misspelled words for a poster project.
A reason to self-study a bunch of APs is to combine it with academic competitions where you need to learn the same stuff anyways.
If you chose my low tier college they’d take all of the exams as credit and you’d have the minimum units for a bachelors degree and at least 75% of the general education requirements done.
@DeniedCSUF
If you decide to go against the advice above and take all these classes. I think you should manage the schedule a bit better. I think some errors are made because I’m guessing that you’ve never taken an AP course? If someone has never taken a course, and actually sat down for an exam, then they don’t know what AP is yet.
-First of all, your 10th grade year looks harder than your 11th grade year. AP Calc BC exam tests AB + BC. So idk why you said you’re gonna take the AB exam and then the BC exam- it’s taking another test for no reason.
-I’d switch AP Comp Sci and AP Chem, and switch AP Euro with AP Gov.
-Learning AP US and AP Gov is easier in the same year compared to learning AP euro + AP US concurrently.
-So you must’ve been in PreCal in 9th to take AP Calc in 10th? If you want to go into a math major, I’d try to find any higher level maths that you can take in your town. (Like a dual enrollment Calc 3, etc.) When you’re applying to colleges, they may not like to see that you haven’t done calculus in 2 years. Especially when you may be doing Calc 3 there in the next semester.
-Overall, it’s possible to do all of these AP’s (if you really wanted to). It’ll show the college that you can handle lots of course rigor. But keep in mind that AP and GPA is just a portion of the application. AP isn’t actually even weighted much at all. SAT/ACT, NMF, extracurriculars, community service, “Golden ECs”, are all much more important to colleges.
“His philosophy is to BS the work the teachers give you / finish them faster than the teachers can give it out and you’ll have plenty of time for extracurriculars and friends. My AP Bio teacher still has his example of turning in a 8.5*11” piece of paper with pencil drawings and misspelled words for a poster project."
And that would ensure that he got poor letters of recommendation. All for a silly award.
There is, quite frankly, no need to take 26 AP classes or to self study such a high number of them. You’re not in high school yet, so maybe you don’t know the rigor of HS yet, and the SAT is in no way a reliable reflection on how you will perform on the AP Exams of different classes. Some AP classes you think are easy may end up being incredibly difficult. Self study AP Music Theory? I took that class and it’s no joke, especially if you don’t have prior musical experience under your belt.
First of all, you can’t take AP Calculus AB and BC in the same year, as stated above, so fix that.
Second, taking AP Physics 2 the same year as AP Physics C E&M is a mistake. They both cover E&M, which is rough in C. Take Physics 2 before C E&M.
Third, doing all of this for an award is a flat out mistake. Your SAT score says absolutely nothing about your ability to handle AP classes. If you’re not interested in every single class you take, it’s going to get rough really quickly.
Fourth, I’ve self taught AP classes before, and all I can tell you is that you’re not as good of a teacher as you think you are. Reading a text book, buying study books, and reading/watching lessons online will not get you 5s on all the tests you plan to take. It may get you a good score on one or two tests, but keep in mind a self taught class isn’t just assigning yourself homework. It’s learning the subject and learning how to teach yourself. It’s an incredibly difficult test. Not to mention that the reason you take an AP class as opposed to teaching it to yourself is that teachers have been doing that stuff for years. They know how to get you good scores on the AP test, whereas you do not.
Fifth, and finally, I assume you have other classes to go along with all your AP classes since you only have two non self taught AP classes your freshman year and no high school would allow you to only have two classes. Because of this, don’t forget that your plan will have you doing the homework for all your AP classes, all your non AP classes, all your self taught classes, along with all the work required to teach yourself those AP classes. Add in time to do extra curriculars, and have a social life/somehow relax (which, in my experience, is important to doing well in high school and not stressing yourself out so much that you just shut down), and you’re over working yourself completely. You’re going to burn yourself out before you reach college.
Long story short, don’t do this. It’s not worth it.
No college really cares how many APs you have taken beyond 5-8. They of course want to see that you can challenge yourself, but that means in terms of what your high school offers- not trying to jam an absurd amount of APs into your four years. You need more than APs to get into college, and with this schedule you won’t have time to do anything besides study. Please, take the advice of everyone on this form and take less APs and actually enjoy high school.
Ultimately I believe the strategy should be to find out what you want to do as a career, pursue relevant class experience / extracurriculars, and position yourself to get an internship early in college. And you can begin networking with adults as early as HS. If you find out what you want to do, you can cut the goal of studying everything through mass AP classes and focus on your interests–I actually wish I abandoned the GPA boosting game a lot earlier and not taking a ton of random APs. P.S. AP Physics made me switch from mechanical to electrical engineering
But nothing is stopping you from (trying) to leave a legacy. Sometimes it sounds too good to be true, but everyone including administrators/principals, teachers, and future students will continue to talk good about you after you graduate – if you fill it in with other extracurriculars to at least stand out beyond APs.
–Depends on how fast and easily you learn. A ton of the APs you can condense the material into really good study books and get a 5 on the subject test. I only went through 19 APs, 9 of them senior year and by then I figured the system. Teachers might never even look at the math problems that you turn in. You get a whole bunch of vocabulary and note writing assignments which they never read either yet are weighted heavily enough to shield your grade enough so getting an A in the class is easy.
But I do still see 26 as overkill unless you have a lot of money or the AP test has most or all of its cost waived and you are studying the material in conjunction of destroying others in competition.
Edit (add): If you are a superstar, you will find that you can work beyond the systems that the teachers put in place for you if you and find that to be most beneficial.
