<p>My daughter is a high school junior and is picking her senior year classes. She has already had bio, chem, and physics (at the honors not AP level) and needs to pick her science class for next year. She is leaning towards AP Environmental Science because she has an interest in the environment and it is something she has not studied before - but some people are telling her it is considered an "easy" AP science and would be looked down upon by colleges.</p>
<p>^I’ve heard this too, but I don’t believe college admissions officers actually care that much. If this is her interest and especially if it fits in with her other activities, I think she should take it and not worry about what people say.</p>
<p>If she cares about getting credit for it at a college, she might look and see how it’s judged at the colleges she’s likely to be applying to.</p>
<p>They will look at her senior year curriculum as a whole.
Clearly, AP EnviroSci is not remotely as hard as, say, AP Physics, but that doesn’t mean that a kid who doesn’t like Physics should be torturing herself with a subject she doesn’t care about just to impress an AdComm.
If she has an extremely challenging curriculum and does well in it, that will be a plus.</p>
<p>Is she taking AP Calc (either AB or BC)?</p>
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<p>Both of the above posts are basically correct. WCASParent is right in saying that ES usually isn’t as difficult as many of the other AP science classes, though this differs from school to school. But, so long as we can tell the curric she takes on in 12 is challenging, the particulars of how that challenge is constructed is a little less specific. There are some exceptions - a student applying with a strong interest in Mechanical Engineering who take AP ES instead of AP Phys will seem strange - but for the most part it’s the overall level of challenge we’re concerned with, and AP ES is a class that can be consistent with a highly challenging year.</p>
<p>Thanks - she has AP Calc already in her junior year so she can take in her senior year either something called multivariable calc (not an AP class but considered college level) or AP Statistics - she is leaning towards the statistics.</p>
<p>Stat would be the far, far, far easier class. But, again, it’s about the overall level of challenge, not any single class. Also (and this is a big point), students shouldn’t overload their schedule to the point where their grades take a significant turn for the worse.</p>
<p>She is going to take the multivariable - she did not have a real preference either way but we ( mistakenly) thought the course with the AP on it would be the more difficult class.</p>
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Normally yes, but it could vary by school. My older son took a multivariable calc course that was unbearably slow. It was the first year they taught it, and the teacher got through less than half the book. Meanwhile our AP Stats teacher had the habit of finishing the AP Stats curriculum by November and spending the rest of the year teaching real Statistics. :)</p>
<p>^^^^ I almost feel silly for having gotten beaten by my own “it varies by school” thing. </p>
<p>Well played, MM.</p>
<p>Anytime Dan. ;)</p>
<p>At my older S’s school, AP Stat was one semester and calc-based. Our experience with Multivariable is that it is heavily teacher dependent. If the teacher is not comfortable with the material, it can be really tough. </p>
<p>If your D is interested in AP Enviro, go for it. Senior year is stressful enough without being stuck in a class she hates. Enviro plus MV may strike a good balance.</p>
<p>My S2 (now at Tufts) took IB/AP Enviro soph year. He liked it because of its interdisciplinary nature – there was economics, earth science, meteorology, geography, bio, chemistry, etc. all rolled together.</p>
<p>Dan, would the courses we took in high school affect our application if we applied for a field that seems irrelevant? Let’s say a person applied for Engineering, but had taken a two year Biology course during junior/senior year, and realized he wanted to engineering after he was in the middle of the course. Would that be detrimental to the application?</p>