<p>Hi, I'm a rising sophomore and this will be my schedule:
Pre-calc
Honors 10th Lang
AP Bio
AP World
AP Euro
Chinese 3&4
My school is block schedule which is weird meaning I take four classes a day but 1.5 hrs long. I was thinking about self studying for AP psych,AP stat,AP comp sci. I'm not really doing for credit or anything I just have an interest in these subjects. I was wondering if anybody can give advice on getting a 5 on these exams and wondering how many of these AP you think I could handle with my current schedule. And also when should I start studying? Is it even possible to self study all the 3 AP's concurrent with my schedule if I start studying year long? Any advice is welcomed!</p>
<p>It’s possible, not recommended. If you are “just interested” in the subjects, why take the AP exams at all? Whyo would you need to get all 5s if you are “just interested”?</p>
<p>You might be better off taking a community college course or using Coursera to take a college course. Or take online courses for each AP course.</p>
<p>Because I want to see how I can do in an actual exam about the topics and just learning about them just isn’t the same. I want to actually show to colleges that I’m interested kinda. Idk my reasoning is complicated. I just want to take the ap exam coresponding to my interest. Also I need more AP because I want national scholar and according to my schedule, I won’t have enough unless I self study some. As long as I know its possible I’ll probably only self study AP comp sci or only AP psych anyways so thank you for your response.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend it. Though it is possible, if this is your first year in APs, the workload 3 APs can demand may surprise you. Don’t study these if an AP award is your only goal. Colleges are fine as long as you take the most rigorous courseload your school allows.</p>
<p>To be fair, AP Psych and AP Comp Sci are fairly easy APs compared to some of the other big ones. I actually wrote a fairly in-depth message to those doing AP Comp Sci in 2015 on the official thread (<a href=“*** Official AP Computer Science A Thread 2014-2015 *** - AP Mathematics & Computer Science - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/mathematics-computer-science/1648914-official-ap-computer-science-a-thread-2014-2015.html</a>). </p>
<p>I can understand wanting to do a test out of interest – I am doing several AP courses next year that I will likely never use in college… I’m just interested in them… The test at the end of the year is a great motivator to learn and master the content.</p>
<p>I will advise you to take heed of what @matt846 suggested, though - for a sophomore (or any first-time-ap-student), 3 AP courses are a bit of an adjustment… 3 AP classes + 3 AP self studies is even more interesting… Perhaps try to change up your schedule or rethink your decision to do some of the self studies?</p>
<p>To have the national scholar label you only need a 4 on 8 exams and a 4.25 average on all the exams taken I believe. If you took 3 APs a year you would have 9 completed by the time you graduated. There’s no point in tacking on a ton of AP classes and self-study courses if you haven’t had the experience of even taking one. </p>
<p>Thank you for everyone’s responses. I actual never thought the 6 AP totals was anything realistic, that’s why I posted this on cc. I think I decided to only self study for the AP comp sci and not the other two. Oh and to tola2015 because you don’t do college apps at the end of senior year, you would have to have taken 8 ap’s by the end of junior year with avg of 4 or more. Not the end of senior year.
And again thank you everyone for your response s. It really helped to making up my mind.</p>