I hope you are all doing well and everyone facing Hurricane Ida is staying safe. I am currently entering Junior year and have a minor dilemma.
I applied and was appointed to be my school newspaper’s managing editor and am in line to be the editor-in-chief during my senior year. The only issue is that I have to use up a class slot for each semester in Junior year for the school newspaper. I am in my school’s signature program and have a class that cannot be moved around/dropped without dropping out of the signature program, so I have to drop AP Human Geography and take four AP classes instead of five (FYI in my school district you can only take 8 classes a semester). I took two AP classes in Sophomore year, and my school doesn’t allow students to take APs as a Freshman. My school is quite large and competitive and offers 29 AP classes. Is it worth being the managing editor and potentially editor in chief of my school newspaper and drop 1 AP or turn down the position and take 5 APs? Thank you, and I hope you guys have a great first week or last few days of summer!
TL;DR: I can either be the managing editor of my school newspaper and drop one AP or turn down being the managing editor and take 5 APs.
I think that you should do whichever you want to do. To me it does sound like being the managing editor might be more interesting and a bit more unique. I would not worry about giving up an AP class.
You might want to google “applying sideways MIT” and read the blog that this takes you to. The point as I understand it is to do what is right for you. This approach has worked for us and I think is the right one for any top university (not just MIT).
If your high school newspaper is a real experience where you create a paper, write articles, do editing and layout and have a true managing experience as first managing editor and then editor in chief, it is an amazing experience. I was an editor of my high school and then college paper and it was my favorite activity even though it had nothing to do with my major and future career. This is definitely the time to consider what you want to do and not worry about the rest. And as others have stated above all schools have one person each year that is the managing editor of their paper and then editor in chief, but lots of people who took the extra AP!
If you want to stand out AND assuming you are interested in the the roles, I’d go for the HS newspaper managing editor/editor-in-chief. There will only be one person in your HS class with those responsibilities versus probably 30 or more taking that AP class. And FWIW Human Geography is generally considered one of the easier APs – it won’t be the class that could have a big impact on an admissions decision.