Next year, for my 11 grade course selection, I am able to take AP English Lang, AP US History, AP Human Geography, and Honors Chemistry, and Honors Pre-Calc. Though I am not necessarily bad at math/science classes, I am not interested in them, so should I take Honors Chem and/or Honors Pre-Calc? Would it look bad if I only took AP Lang, AP US history, and AP human geography? I have heard from some people that colleges want you to take classes in fields that interest you, but some say colleges like students who are more well rounded, and not specifically concentrated on one field/subject. Do you have any suggestions on which of these courses I should take?
(I want to limit myself to 3 AP courses, because I don’t want to take too many weighted courses and end up doing bad in them, and I kinda want to keep my social life)
Take what you think you can handle. Yes, colleges will want to see you take on challenges and see that you are well-rounded. As long as you think you can get B-ish grades, it’s probably helpful.
Also, talk to other students at your school and ask their suggestions! If it turns out there’s a STEM teacher who’s particularly inspiring and is able to interest non-STEM students in their subject, then that makes the class much more worthwhile. If its a class that even students wanting to do STEM are dreading, then staying away is a good idea.
The number of AP classes, on a rigor scale, only matters in RELATIVITY to your school. If your school offers all the APs and most students take like 7 in a year, then 3 would be looked at as not that rigorous. In most schools though, 3 is plenty.
I think 3 is a good amount. APUSH is reportedly super hard, and will most likely take a lot of time. Same for AP Lang. Luckily, you don’t have any Calc or Physics in that schedule. AP Human Geo is one of the easier APs, and I found both Precalc and Chem to be not too hard.
Take classes that challenge you. Don’t pigeonhole yourself to one field; you can do that later when you’ve decided your major and what not and even then you can totally take any class, even botany as an econ major or cooking as a premed lol
Good luck!