I know it’s early, but my school starts to pick classes early 2nd semester, and I want to have a plan for my classes soon.
Anyway, I’m really conflicted about which science course to take next year. I’m currently a sophomore in Chemistry and I’m planning on majoring in Engineering (thinking about Civil Engineering) in college.
Originally I was planning to take AP Physics 1 next year, but now I’m not so sure. I have the same teacher who teaches AP Physics (also regular Physics) for Chemistry and he’s not very good. He is very boring and bad at explaining things, and he is super slow at grading everything. It takes him almost a whole month to grade each test we take, and because of that none of us know where we are actually at in his class. I know a few people taking AP Physics and all of them have told me to just take regular Physics. Apparently, this year only one student has an A in the class.
I’ve heard that AP Environmental Science is really easy, so that could possibly be an easy grade bump. The only problem is that many colleges view that class as a joke. I’m definitely not taking AP Bio and I don’t think I would do well in AP Chem. If I take APES next year I’ll most likely just take AP Physics my senior year.
Would it be worth it to take Physics, and then AP Physics? It’s not required, so I feel like it’s a waste of a class but it could help.
I really want to get into UC Berkeley (dream school), UCLA, or UCSD and I know the UC schools really look at your 10th and 11th grade GPA’s and I don’t want to screw up next year. I’m planning on having 4-5 AP classes but I really don’t want to overwhelm myself with all the hard AP classes because I want the highest GPA possible. Let me know which schedule for next year sounds the best:
Option 1
AP English Lang, AP Calc AB, AP Physics 1, AP Stats, US History, Chinese III, Robotics
Option 2
AP English Lang, AP Calc AB, AP Environmental Science, AP Stats, AP US History or US History, Chinese III, Robotics
This year I’m only taking AP Human Geography for my social science class, so I haven’t taken many AP’s…
Sorry that this is so long. Any responses are greatly appreciated!