Our public high schools requires four years of social studies, one which must be US History and government. There are electives including psych, soc, humanities, human geography, and european. I think it comes down to your target list of colleges and seeing what is right for you child. My daughter would have loved to have taken less:)
Fortunately @lookingforward did qualify by saying it was his/her opinion, but I disagree that 2 AP’s are needed. In many instances, the choice may be out of the students hands due to HS requirements. Basically every single HS in the US has a USH requirements, and many states have moved towards a gov/econ requirement. An additional year of non-USH is certainly very helpful to give perspective. But even for the high performing kids, these don’t all need to be AP.
Additionally, as one who has taken AP exams more recently than basically everyone on this thread, I will say from firsthand experience that the overlap between APWH and APEH is minimal. As an aside, as an EU national, I am amazed that most US school’s history curricula is so US focused (with perhaps a smattering of European history thrown in as it relates to US colonial history thrown in). Latin American history? Hah! 4000 years of Chinese history? Good luck getting any of that covered.
Yup. But I know we agree it depends on the tier or nature of the college. And I didn’t say “2 AP are required.” In fact, I did say OP’s son may be fine with honors WH. And so on, in a context
D’s high school also requires four years to include civics/economics, world history, American history, and at least one elective (and there are MANY options including both African-American history and Latin American history).
My D’s problem is even with taking courses during the summer, there are more classes she would like to take than she open slots in her schedule. She has a good idea of the schools she will be attending and how they handle AP credit so we worked out a strategy to help her make decisions. When she put together her schedule she considered the following factors:
- Maintain Course Rigor - her fist choice school considers Course Rigor “Very Important”
- Which AP tests give the biggest bang for college credit, i.e. a 4 for APUSH gives 6 college credits while APWorld gives only 3.
- What would be better to take in HS and avoid in College - for her it was Physics to eliminate the Physical Science requirement in college.
- What would be more interesting to take in college - she chose not to take APEuro which will require her to take at least one Gen ED Humanities in college. The college Humanities courses looked much more interesting to her than APEuro did
So @may999 , maybe it is better to take the SS in HS and get AP credit so your S can avoid an SS in College. Or maybe getting more Physics out of the way will let him start courses in his major earlier and a freshman SS course might make a good schedule filler?
As to admissions, some here will disagree, but my D’s GC insists STEM classes that build on other STEM classes (like Physics C) are considered more rigorous than SS classes.
Often, for general education, classes need to be in two different subjects. So, while it’d make sense for a STEM student to take more advanced classes in physics , it would be better for a humanities /social science major to take two different stem subjects to get out if science get eds.
Social sciences include a lot more than standard history! Many ways to avoid history to meet college requirements and avoid history. btw- even if a student takes college economics having a background in HS is good.
Aside from recommendations there may be a list of what most successful applicants have for HS units in some areas. If most have 4 units of something then that is the norm for entering students at that school.