Sophomore Course Choices

Hello! I am going to be taking AP European History, AP Psychology, Chemistry Honors, Math 3 Honors, Spanish 4, Concert Orchestra, English Honors, and Seminary during my sophomore year. I was wondering if I can manage this course load, or if it is too much? I may also be taking Driver’s Ed during the school year. I just want to make sure I can manage and keep up with the rest of my classes. I was debating whether to take Intro to Psych or AP Psych and decided to go with the AP as I’m interested in it. Anyone have any advice, etc? Thanks!!

Could you take Intro to Psych Sophomore year and AP Psych junior year if you liked the intro course?
It’d make your schedule manageable and you’d keep a subject of interest.

I would do AP psych next year along with AP euro. It will be less overwhelming now than junior or senior year when you’ll potentially be juggling AP english, math, and science courses. My sophomore schedule this year is pretty similar except I have APUSH (which my school breaks into two years), AP econ, and AP psych self-studied. It has been completely manageable.

As a sophomore I think I would only do one AP.

It depends on what you took your freshman year. What I like to think about is that there are multiple “rungs” of difficulty at high school. Within each year, if you find your course load pretty easy, you can move on to the next rung. Freshmen will ideally start at the 1st or 2nd rung that I’m going to list, but some will go as far as the 3rd rung. Anyway, here are the rungs:

RUNG 1: No honors classes
RUNG 2: One or two honors classes, with the rest being normal
RUNG 3: Three or four honors classes
RUNG 4: One or two AP classes, with the rest being honors
RUNG 5: Three or four AP classes

I have listed 6 types of schools out there. These schools range from Ivy League and difficult schools (Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Yale, etc.) to very easy schools to get into (There are lots out there, if you have the grades). Considering each group of schools, I list the minimum rung you should be at within each year. If you want to take a harder rung within that year, do so at your own risk. F for freshman year, So for sophomore, J for junior, S for senior.

Any Ivy League or difficult school to get into: F:3, So:4, J:5, S:5
Hard school to get into: F:3, So:4, J:4, S:5
Target school not in your favor: F:2, So:3, J:4, S:5
Target school in your favor, harder public universities: F:1, So:2, J:3, S:4
Easy school to get into, easy public universities: F:1, So:1, J:2, S:2
The 99% acceptance rate schools: F:1, So:1, J:1, S:2

Now, using your schedule from freshman year and your ideal school you want to go to, find out what rung you are in and go from there. If you’re on the first rung and want to go to Ivy League, I wouldn’t consider it.

There are, however, exceptions to the rung rule.

One exception is if you move and your new counselor puts you into an easier schedule than you planned. This was the case for me. My ideal plan was to do 1,2,3,4, but instead, I got put into all normal courses my junior year when I intended to do mostly honors courses. Because of this, I got moved down from rung 3 to rung 2 for junior year. However, when I found my courses easy, I moved up from rung 2 to rung 4.

Basically, if you got moved down rungs for reasons that aren’t academic, you can try to fight back by continuing on that rung path within the next year.

That said, I wish you the best of luck.
-Simon
Class of 2019

@simberry2 I like your response, explained in simpler terms, very nice.