I would ALSO advise you to NOT take more than 4 AP’s your SR year.
What you dont realize, as we do, is that the entire college application process, which MUST be done during the first semester of your SR year, is like having an additional time consuming part time job, ON TOP of your classes.
What you do NOT want to happen is your GPA to fall because you sinply do not have time to do everything, so the advise to take only 4 AP classes is absolutely correct.
And wise.
I suggest you take it.
Well my two options of taking non-APs would be to do Honors Chem instead of AP and honors Spanish instead of AP. But these changes wouldn’t decrease my workload really. The honors chem teacher is even considered harder than the AP teacher and AP Spanish would be a complete continuation of my Pre-AP class this year, so I think I would even be more comfortable with sticking with what I know as opposed to trying out something new in Honors.
Ask your guidance counselor whether you’ll be allowed to “drop down” if this is too hard.
But that schedule doesn’t seem reasonable - something needs to be taken off or “dropped down”.
One option I have been looking at is taking an english elective as opposed to AP English. I am looking to go into engineering and feel no need to take AP English, but my school took away the Honors Senior English option, leaving us college prep level or AP, which is a bit unfair in my opinion. If any of the English electives would offer a higher weighted average towards my GPA I may consider taking one of them, but I don’t want to sacrifice my class rank for this.
I understand that 6 APs is a lot, but I think it may be sort of different at my school. Last year the valedictorian took all APs (7) and the salutatorian took 6. Most kids ranked in the top 10 take at least 5.
As long as you’re top 10%, NO ONE outside of high school cares about class rank.
That’s why valedictorians are crushed when someone ranked 12 gets into a college and they don’t. They don’t get that the rest of the world doesn’t see high school the way they do.
How many AP’s others take - 4,5, 6 - makes no difference - they all buy into the stockpiling AP mentality. If it keeps them happy and challenged, good for them, but it doesn’t really help with college admissions once you’ve reached 8 *total and it severely cuts down on sleep.
See if you can indeed take an English elective. In addition, if the title’s original, it’ll help you stand out.
Keep in mind that you’ll have the equivalent of an extra class due to all the essays you’ll have to write for your colleges.
If it gives you more time to polish those essays - which, at highly selective schools, often make the difference between all the academically qualified candidates - and doesn’t cut on sleep, it’s absolutely worth it.
- exception: if you attend a low-performing school where most do not attend college, then requirements are more stringent in terms of class rank and Top 10 matters.
I understand, thank you for your help! I’ll reconsider and talk to my gc too! 
@MYOS1634
Do colleges care about val/sal and class rank? Maybe, maybe not. Look at the data below and decide for yourself.
Darthmouth:
30% val, 9% sal, 52% top 10% (but not top 2), 9% not top 10%
https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/facts-advice/facts/class-profile
Brown:
9% overall acceptance rate
10% of applicants without class rank accepted
18% of vals accepted
14% of sals accepted
7% of top 10% (but not top 2) accepted
https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts
^^ Look at the common data sets for those 2 colleges- LESS than 35% of of accepted students at Dartmouth and LESS THAN 32% at Brown reported rank.
@menloparkmom Right, so of the roughly 2/3 of applicants whose high schools didn’t report rank, their acceptance rate was nearly the same as the overall acceptance rate (as expected). But for those 1/3 of applicants who were ranked, the acceptance rate varied significantly by rank (18% of val, 14% of sal, 7% of other top 10%).
Now, one may argue that val/sal applicants tend to be more distinguished in other ways (test scores, ECs, hooks, etc.) than other top 10% students, but these applicants tend to be self-selected from high-achieving high schools with dozens of competitive applicants.
Actually, the opposite is true. Low-performing high schools are more likely to rank than high-performing high schools, and private/Day schools are less likely still, with most boarding schools simply indicating no official rank whatsoever but rather what percentage students got a GPA in the … to … range in the school profile from 3.8-4 to 2.0-2.4.
For high performing high schools that use rank, top colleges barely use the exact rank at all since it goes without saying that all students in the top 15-20% will have taken an extremely rigorous curriculum and can handle top colleges academically. There is no clear “differentiator” between someone who ranks #1,#2, #3, and we’re all too aware that rank can be manipulated, can indicate unwillingness to take risk, conformity, etc, it really depends on the kid, his/her profile, and the school. So, as long as you’re top 10% in a regular school or top 15-20% in a high performing school, don’t worry about rank and especially don’t get hung up about it or make harmful choices to protect your rank.
About 50 % of applicants to top colleges come from private HS’s and most of them no longer rank students. As MYOS1634 states above, it is usually the public HS that have not abandoned the practice of ranking individual students.
True, I do go to a public school! At this point I’m not concerned about keeping my place for college admissions reasons because I know as long as I stay in the top 10% I should be okay, rather I just really want to be the one to give the speech at graduation. I’ve worked so hard thus far and I’ve made it over half way through high school in this position so it would be nice to finish in it as well and sort of get a kind of “reward” for it. I know it is annoying but it’s sort of been a dream. Also the val gets a scholarship after graduation and the Dartmouth Book Award at the end of Junior year at my school.
Finalized list (submitted through school portal, but I can still change it):
AP English Lit
AP BC Calculus
AP World History
AP Biology
AP Spanish 5
Honors Philosophy/Comp Govt
Honors Chemistry 2
thoughts/opinions?
Looks very rigorous to me, very well-balanced.