Hi! I’m currently about to be in 10th grade in high school and class schedules just came out. On my class schedule, I only have one honors class which is US History 1. In my freshman year, I took English I Honors, Algebra 1 Honors and Biology Honors. My GPA was a 3.7 freshman year. I got high B’s in my honor classes except for Biology, I got an 84 and in algebra I got an 80. However, I’m not continuing in honors with those subjects because my teachers has recommended me for regular classes for this year, even though I feel like I did fine in those subjects except for algebra. I started off bad in the beginning of the year, almost failing but by the end of 3rd and 4th marking period I started getting A’s and B’s because I found a learning method that i found to work well. If I were to continue in honors classes I would only have Geometry honors and Chemistry Honors, definetley not English Honors again because my essays are not the strongest. I’ve heard that Chemistry is hard in general, so I don’t know if I’d want to be in honors for that class I’m not good at things like balancing chemical equations. My freshman biology teacher told me that she’d recommended me to chemistry honors (but she didn’t) but she was hesitating to do so because at the time my math grade was bad. At the end of my freshman year, my math teacher told me that Geometry Honors is more challenging than Algebra Honors, but he feels like I might be okay in it, but not for sure. I feel like I can also take Spanish Honors, but the teacher I had last year wasn’t the nicest so she didn’t recommend me. I have the option to change my course level if I wanted to but I’m not sure if I should. If I continue with the schedule I have, I should be having straight A’s because the classes are easier than what I’m used to. Also I want to do whatever would look the best on college applications when I start enrolling. Would it look bad if Im only taking one honor class sophomore year when In freshman year I took three? I’ve been so stressed out, I’m so worried that if I stay with only one honor class this year that its gonna reduce my chances in getting into college (I know it’s kinda early to be worrying so much about college but I’m so determined to go). If I stayed with only taking one honors class this year, I would definitely be taking all honors classes and maybe some AP classes junior year because the regular classes are easy. But if I go with taking more honors classes this year such as Geometry and Spanish and maybe Chemistry, my grades might be lower because of the difficulty. Please give me advice, anything helps !! 
In my experience, honors is not much harder than regular classes. My advice would be to go with the honors in the classes you are stronger in.
Maybe Spanish and Geometry in honors, but leave Chem regular, since you struggled in Bio.
However, Bio and Chem are very different, so you could try for that one in honors.
However, what I want to know is what extracurricular activities you are in, and how much time you spend studying each night.
If you can do more studying this year than you did last year, I see no problem with you taking four honors courses.
I didn’t do a lot of extra curricular activities, I was just in one club last year. However, this year I’m looking into being in lots of clubs, maybe like two or four. And in the first two marking periods in my freshman year I didn’t really study because I was used to just winging it for tests and quizzes which is what brought my final grade down a lot. By third and fourth marking period I realized that I actually needed to study a lot to get the grades I wanted, and when I started taking time to study my grades were so much higher. If I did this in the beginning of the year, I’m sure I’d still be continuing with honors in my classes. And I studied for about 20-45 minutes for each class every night
If you make sure to balance your schedule, I think you’ll be fine. Say you go to one club per day during the week, That would leave you with plenty of time to get in the studying that you need
If you make sure to balance your schedule, I think you’ll be fine. Say you go to one club per day during the week, That would leave you with plenty of time to get in the studying that you need
It sounds like the reason for your initially low grades was lack of preparation and slacking off. From the way you learned how to actually study and the way you raised your grades, I think that you would be fine with taking at least 3 honors classes. As for ECs, remember that it’s more important for you to find a couple ECs that you are really interested in and invest a lot of time into those.
Thank you all for your advice!