Hi, I am a very motivated and determined freshman (looking at Ivy leagues), and I wanted some advice for sophomore year.
My planned schedule so far:
Honors Analysis/ Pre-Calc (A Junior class)
Honors Chemistry
Gifted Am. Studies 2 OR AP US History
Honors English 10
Honors French 3
AP Comp. Sci A
I am definitely a science/math oriented student, but I like social studies. I don’t know if APUSH would be right for me. I am in the Gifted program and it is not very challenging for me, but I don’t know how it would be next year (I don’t expect much more of a challenge). Any advice?
@varags Taking all of the same courses as you right now. Except that I have Honors Advanced Research and Spanish instead of your French class. It all depends on your school. I hate APUSH and it really sucks, it might be my first B ever, but it has taught me a lot. If I was in your shoes one year ago, I would have dropped the class for my sanity. Nightly outlines take around 1.5 hours a day. And pop quizzes pretty much daily (not really pop anymore). The test is nothing like you have ever had before.
Take APUSH if you don’t have a lot of other commitments, but don’t if you do. If you got any more questions, tag me.
I’m currently taking APUSH as a sophomore, and I think I’ve had a slightly different experience from the above poster. It’s a LOT of note taking, but the subject matter itself isn’t too challenging if you’ve been going to school in the US and you’ve been retaught a watered down version of the material over and over again since first grade.
One thing I will say, though, is that I don’t think I’d be nearly as successful in the class had I not taken AP World History as a freshman. If you’ve never taken an AP history class before, two things might be especially challenging for you: stimulus questions and writing a DBQ essay. (The former are multiple choice questions, except instead of testing your knowledge of the material outright, they make you read historical excerpts and use your knowledge to interpret them. The latter will give you seven historical documents and a claim to take a stance on, and make you use a very specific formula to write a paper on how the documents and your outside knowledge of the time period support your stance.) I haven’t had any trouble with these things because I learned how to do them in AP World (as APUSH, AP World, and AP Euro all have the same test format), but other sophomores I know who are taking this as their first AP are having a difficult time with it. Most people at my school take APUSH as a junior for this reason.
My advice: either take AP World or AP Euro as a sophomore and APUSH as a junior, or take APUSH as a sophomore and make sure to practice stimulus questions/DBQs on your own time.
It would depend on the career field you want to prepare for but if you’re pursuing an ivy league, then you definitely should pursue the most rigorous course. My APUSH teacher is not that great considering he didn’t cover WWII for last year APUSH exam and the majority of students getting 2’s and 1’s. I would ask around to see how good your teacher is.
To me the question is if you should take it this year or junior year.
What do you want to major in in college?
When do most kids take APUSH in your HS?
If you say that you are a potential STEM major and most kids take it Junior year, then wait.
If you are a Humanities major and many kids take it sophomore year, then maybe this is the time.
APUSH would be recommended for top 25 Universities/LACs if offered to juniors, but as a sophomore, check the history sequence at your school and how sophomores fare with it.
APUSH is the class sophomores take as their first AP at my kid’s school, so asking around to see what the norm is for your school probably makes sense.
I would talk to upperclassmen at your school and see what they advise! This will be the most relevant information to you. As with any AP, the teacher can make it a breeze or make it your hardest class. APUSH at my HS is notoriously hard. Even students who took AP World the year before struggle immensely. (For reference, my school’s advanced sequence is 9-AP Gov, 10-AP World, 11-APUSH, 12-AP Econ.) However, I know students at other high schools who have super easy APUSH classes.
I am a current junior who is STEM-oriented. Although I got good grades in AP World last year, I had to put in around two hours per night, nearly every night, on AP World homework alone. Instead of putting myself through that anguish again, I elected to take Dual Enrollment US History (much easier, and opened up another spot in my schedule for an extra science class).
If your schedule is already rigorous enough (plenty of other APs/advanced classes), make your decision based on mental health and time management. Not taking APUSH, in the grand scheme of things, won’t change the level or quality of your application, especially if you’re not pursuing a humanities major.
I agree with @sciencegirl2024 … ask around about the teacher. If you hear good things, go for it. At our hs the APUSH teachers (and AP Euro, which is the 10th grade course here) teachers are challenging but great teachers so pretty much all of the top students take those classes (on the flip side, we have a couple of pretty lame English teachers so a lot of the top STEM kids drop down to ‘regular’ English).