<p>I'm currently taking AP Calculus AB as a junior. For senior year I plan to take:</p>
<p>English 4 (regular)
AP Chemistry (double period)
AP Biology (double period)
Honors Organic Chemistry
AP Calculus BC</p>
<p>The problem is there is a possibility of schedule conflicts due to the double periods. Would it be a bad idea to skip math senior year if I took AP Calculus AB as a junior? (I'm getting an A in the class now) I'm interested in entering fields such as pharmacy, botany, chemistry, or biochemistry. Will not taking Calc BC make a big difference for college admissions?</p>
<p>What would you take instead? How selective are teh colleges you are planning to apply for? And you always want to try and make yourself the most competitive applicant possible, so if your not going to take Calc BC, and going to take a regular class, then that might not look bad. Strength of schedule, in terms of your HS, is usually one of the top 1-3 admission factors at all (top 50ish) colleges. Talk to your GC for more help. You have many months to decide, don’t rush this decision.</p>
<p>Your AP Calculus book should have all the material you need to also learn the BC portion. You could study the supplemental material yourself and ask your school to upgrade your AB exam to BC – the BC test will take place in the same room and the same time as the AB test, you’ll just be off in a separate corner. </p>
<p>On the other hand, BC Calc next year would be an easy A. With AP Chem and AP Bio the same year, you may find yourself with too much studying and too many homework assignments (including lab write-ups) due all at the same time. Add in Organic, and it’s a virtual certainty that will not have enough hours in the day to finish your homework assignments at certain peak times.</p>
<p>AB covers 1/2 a semester (differentiation), while BC covers AB material, plus integration (and series and sequences), e.g. a whole year. Also, you get an AB subscore.</p>
<p>If you are ABLE to, you might as well try for independent study. Integration doesn’t really need any knowledge of differentiation in my opinion, except to know that they they are essentially opposite. Plus, I’m sure your teacher will be happy to help.</p>
<p>@LI: Well, he should live. His schedule is slightly less loaded than mine. Lucky fellow doesn’t seem to be required to take Social Studies and such every year.</p>
<p>Without knowing more about your overall transcript, how well you’ve done in your core coursework, and where you’re planning to apply next year it’s difficult to provide you with relevant advice. I’ll try but I may not have the right understanding of your situation. So here goes …</p>
<p>Your proposed senior year schedule looks very unbalanced with its heavy weight on advanced chemistry and biology courses and its absence of expected core courses. My sense is that it will very likely baffle admission committees and will not work in your favor. I would have expected to see core courses (ideally at a honors/AP level) in history, foreign language and math (which you’re thinking of dropping), in addition to “one” lab science course and English. Your schedule appears like that of someone who’s already “majoring” in something in high school, and this is not the usual expectation of selective colleges of high school students.</p>
<p>In practice it’s rarely wise to place out of lab science courses in strong colleges. The high school/online/CC variants of such courses are no match for the college equivalent, and placing out can create major gaps for follow on courses.</p>
<p>Advanced lab science courses in biology and chemistry require a strong foundation in physics, and physics (at the level that’s necessary) is made easier with strong foundation in Calculus at the BC level.</p>
<p>So maybe your schedule would help you transition into a premed/pharmacy (or equivalent) science curriculum at college. Without knowing your previous grades it’s hard to know if you really need that boost. All this said I think that you need to reconsider your proposed schedule. Talk to your GC and ask admissions representatives at the colleges that you’ll consider next of what they think of your schedule, and what they recommend you do.</p>
<p>My D faced a scheduling conflict regarding her Senior year math. We received input from an adcom at one of her most selective schools which indicated they would be looking for that 4th year of math. She chose to resolve the problem by taking a summer math course (Statistics) at a local community college. It certainly resolved the scheduling conflict and she doesn’t have math at all this year which she likes. We’ll see how it works for admissions. As Fogcity suggested, you can e-mail an adcom at one of the schools you are interested in and get their take. D was very pleasantly surprised to get a prompt and clear answer when she asked.</p>
<p>Also, echoing Fogcity, we were also told at the most selective schools that they were looking for 4 years of the core subjects, that high school was not the place to specialize.</p>
<p>I’m not aiming for extremely competitive schools. Colleges I’m looking to apply to are Rutgers, University of Vermont, and University of Rhode Island.
My junior schedule right now is this:</p>
<p>English (regular)
AP Physics B
AP Psychology
AP US History
AP Calculus AB</p>
<p>I currently have As in all of them except for a B in APUSH. We don’t need to take history our senior year. (and most people at my school don’t unless you’re going into a history heavy field in college) I also have 4 years of social studies since AP Psychology is considered social studies credit at my school. If I can’t fit BC into the schedule, then my guidance counselor told me I should be able to take an independent study for it though.</p>