<p>All my high school years, I've tried to keep my options plentiful and open by taking rigorous honors and AP courses. I think I've really done it this year seeing how I'm taking 5 AP courses.</p>
<p>Not even half way through the year, I'm doing fine in [AP: Stats, English, Calculus, Bio, Physics], and now I'm questioning- what good is all this doing for me?</p>
<p>I'm pretty certain I want to become a Mechanical Engineer, but that decision came pretty recent. Now I see no point to taking AP Bio/Stats...and they're taking a drag with my after school life because they're terminology-heavy and take a timeload just to study for.</p>
<p>So are all these AP courses helping me in some way at least? or am I just shooting myself in the foot?</p>
<p>Well hopefully the college of your choice will let you pass out of some intro classes/fill distrib requirements if you get good AP exam scores. That way you’ll have more room in your schedule to take classes you really enjoy.</p>
<p>AP anything means your a step ahead of the game bro, even if you don’t get the scores needed for credit it will prepare you for a real college level class. If you do get the college credits then you will have a semester or whole year head start. What’s not to like about that?</p>
<p>At our school the bar has been pushed and during my junior year most of my friends were taking 5-6 ap classes with zero hour. My junior year I only took 4 ap classes but 5 ap tests (ap chinese). These mexican identical twin brothers I knew took as many AP classes they could fit and got accept into stanford. However, they had the brains to take all the ap classes and had a perfect 4.0 unweighted.</p>