Should I take AP ES or AP Comp Sci A

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

I’m currently picking classes for my senior year, and I’m deciding between these two classes. This is the first year AP ES is being offered at my school, and I had the teacher my freshman year for biology so I think he would be a good teacher. I already know a good deal of Python so I’m hoping that Java would be relatively easy to pick up, but AP ES looks a lot more fun. I’ll be majoring in physics or math in college, so objectively I know I should take CS… but AP ES still looks more fun, and hey it’s my senior year why not have some fun

Rest of my planned course schedule:

  • AP Lit
  • AP Gov/Econ
  • AP Physics C
  • AP Stats
  • Leadership (required for student body officers)
  • Dual enrollment multivar calc, diffeqs at local community college (one per semester)

If you have any tips and/or recommendations, please let me know. Thanks!

2

AP ES will show that you can perform in-depth labs and understand worldwide issues. AP Comp Sci will show that you can self-teach the intricacies of a computer language along with advanced math.
Depending on your college and major they may be looking for one or the other of these two different things.

3

I agree with you that CS would be the “right” answer from an application standpoint, for rigor and alignment with major. But with 4 APs and an advanced math course, I don’t think that’s as big a concern.

If you’ve shown previous CS capabilities through coursework or ECs, I think taking the course that interests you more is fine. (Or even if you haven’t…)

4

Obviously this varies from person to person, but as someone who has taken both courses I’ve personally found APCSA to be a more exciting class because we got to make cool little programs and games and it was more free in its structure, whereas APES was more of like a standard, textbook/lecture based class.