Sophomore Year Course Selection

Applying to College
1

Recently at my high school, we were asked to select our courses for our upcoming sophomore year. Once I had selected all of my courses, other students were continuously asking if I was “up to the challenge” and “ready for hell”. I had chosen the courses I did because of simple interest in the classes, not for any sort of “prestige” that my fellow peers were looking for. My freshman year schedule was as follows:

Honors US History II
Trigonometry
Honors English 9
Italian I
AP Environmental Science
Freshman Seminar (required class)
Speech I

And here’s my sophomore schedule for comparison:
AP World History
Honors Pre-Calculus
AP English Language*
Honors Italian III**
Honors Chemistry
AP Physics***
Student Government (elected into office)

  • - Only rising sophomore allowed to skip a year and take AP Lang ** - Allowed to skip second year of Italian bc I'm one of my teacher's "best students" *** - One of only two sophomores taking AP Physics in the school

I’m participated in Boys’ JV Golf, Speech and Debate (2 events), Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA, 2 events), and volunteering at the local hospital every Sunday in freshman year; next year I plan on adding Science Olympiad, DECA (national marketing club), switching out golf for soccer, and hopefully volunteering in more organizations.
My questions: are these classes too difficult for a sophomore to take so early in high school? If so, will this schedule set me apart from my peers in terms of course difficulty?

Thanks in advance for any responses!

2

Are you a gambler?

3

Well you are going to be plenty busy with AP history, AP English and Precalc. Not sure why you are taking Chem and AP physics as well.

Why not save physics for next year? And where is Biology?

4

Is it not possible to spread these courses out for junior/senior year? Do you have to take all these courses now in order to take the classes you want later? Does your school let you drop courses in the first few weeks if you find this course load too difficult to manage?

5

@ClarinetDad16 I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but I can tell you that I am willing to take all the time I need to succeed in these courses, even if right now I’m not sure how much work I’ll be receiving. Thank you for the response!

@mommdc Yes, I’ve been told by previous sophomores in my school that AP World is very time-consuming, but I’m already creating preemptive study groups with friends who are also taking the same class! AP English is, to my surprise, is one of the easier APs at my school, so that shouldn’t be as much of an obstacle as AP World. Pre-Calc is obviously in its own realm. I have AP biology saved for senior year, and I plan on hopefully taking an AP science every year of high school.

@sophie9999 I have spoken with my counselor, and I asked her about taking all AP sciences and its feasibility. She recommended doubling up with Honors chem and AP physics sophomore year, AP chem Junior year (we are required to take regular chemistry a year in advanced before AP chem), and AP Biology as a senior. And yes, we are allowed three weeks in the beginning of a school year to drop and change courses.

Thanks for the responses!

6

It just seems a lot to juggle with all your EC and a sport.

7

are these classes too difficult for a sophomore to take so early in high school? Probably not, assuming you are a hard working honors student and that you found your freshman classes pretty easy.

If so, will this schedule set me apart from my peers in terms of course difficulty? Not really. Most of it is par for the course for the better honors sophomores at our school.

You didn’t specify whether it’s AP physics 1 or AP physics C. AP physics 1 is meant to be a first physics course and many schools have dropped honors physics altogether for AP physics 1. There isn’t any reason why a sophomore couldn’t do it, assuming reasonable math sophistication. We have a number of sophomores taking AP physics 1 or 2 at our school and I haven’t heard any complaints. AP physics C will be a lot harder and should not be taken at your math level–you need at least concurrent calculus. AP world will be a lot of work, AP English language is usually a junior course, and the difficulty will vary a lot between schools. I don’t see this schedule as being too difficult as long as you realize you’ll have to work very hard in AP world, but that’s typically a sophomore course and typically a big shock to most students because it is one of the high workload APs and for many sophomores it’s the first AP they take. (For reference, APES is considered one of the easy APs–not sure why your school allowed you into APES as ours requires bio and chem as prereqs.

8

If you are required to take 4 years of language arts to graduate then I would save AP Lang/lit for junior/senior year or be left with nothing else to take.

Rather than thinking about what to take each year, my daughter’s school ask the kid to plot their sequence in each subject area. 4 years of language arts, 4 years of social studies, and so on. Showing progression in each area. Skipping classes does not always benefit the student.

9

@mathyone The course is a combined AP Physics 1 and 2, so it’s definitely easier than Physics C (not sure how I could’ve taken that with only pre-calculus!) and my current science teacher told me that my work ethic should be able to pull me through the class. I am prepared for AP World and acknowledge its required work ethic. I was also told by the AP English Lang teacher (she has read a couple of my essays) and my current Honors 9 teacher that I am “very prepared to skip Honors 10”. These won’t be the first AP’s I’m taking, with APES already under my belt, but I am willing to work as much as is required to succeed.

@VickiSoCal Yes, we are required to take 4 years of English to graduate. I have already spoken to my counselor about this issue, and they have stated that the school offers an STS English class as well (STS - college classes directly taught in our high school), and kids in the past had the independent choice to take AP English as sophomores by choice, so they had to establish a class for them to take as seniors. That class will remain standing, and my counselor said I’m on track to take that class as a senior, so graduation requirements aren’t an issue.

Thanks to everyone who replied!

10

OK it sounds like your school is still teaching Physics B, which was replaced by 1 and 2. That will be more work than Physics 1 because you are covering more material.

Is this STS English an online course? I think you’d get more out of an actual class. Are your parents ok with the college class? They may have to pay tuition and buy texts.

11

“One of only two sophomores taking AP Physics in the school”. I get the sense that you feel you have to race the kids in your school and skip over things to “get ahead” of them. So, you took physics as a sophomore. I don’t think colleges will care one bit about that. You’ll be taking Bio as a senior. A lot of kids take that as sophomores or juniors. It really doesn’t matter. I think you would do well to look at your 4 year plan and ask the questions, is this at an appropriate level of difficulty for me, and do these courses support my academic and career goals?, rather than How can I get “ahead” of the other guy?

12

That sounds great! I’m a huge fan of taking the highest level courses (I’m also a sophomore and I am). I’m not sure why you would go from Italian 1 to Honors Italian 3 in one year. Not to take anything away from you, but taking Honors Pre-cal, Honors Chemistry, and AP Physics might be hell for you all in one year (you should probably save a couple for years to come). AP World may be tough, depending on how good you are with history (I could honestly tutor you, haha). Well, good luck, fellow sophomore!

13

Also student government, haha!

14

@mathyone No, the STS is not an online course, it’s an “actual class”, and the district pays for our fees. I have already discussed it with my parents and they agree it’s a good path for me to go on. Me wondering about the difficulty and its benefits is the reason I’m posting, I myself have said many times that I am willing to do whatever is necessary to succeed in these classes! I plan on majoring in something in STEM (but nothing in involving medical), so I feel as if these choices are fairly justified. I personally believe that it doesn’t matter what level you take biology, but if you believe on the contrary then feel free to explain your reasoning!

@ryanalexander116 Thanks! The Italian teacher notified me that she has her “better students” skip her second calss and immediately take the third Honors course. I understand the predicament I may put myself through for those classes, but I have friends that are taking the same classes. Good luck to you, too!

Thank you to all who responded!

15

@mathyone As I had stated in my original post, I am not taking the classes I am enrolled in for prestige, but I can’t say the same about my peers. Me getting ahead in certain subjects were recommendations from teachers, not from my own forced will, even though I did approve their choices. Although I asked if these classes would get me “ahead”, that was simply a question to assure that I would receive benefits from the difficult classes I’m taking and whether or not they’re worth it.

16

No, it doesn’t matter what grade level you take Biology or whatnot. Your posts indicate you think it does. Or why do you say things like “* - Only rising sophomore allowed to skip a year and take AP Lang *** - One of only two sophomores taking AP Physics in the school”

I do think it makes best pedagogical sense to take physics concurrently with calculus rather than beforehand, even if it’s non-calculus based physics. The calculus will trivialize some of the physics at non-calculus level.

You may be willing to do whatever is necessary to succeed but you should also think about what kind of high school experience you want to have. If you skip over too many classes, you will miss out on sharing the hs experience with your grade level friends. If you have to work too hard, you may have to sacrifice EC’s or get too little sleep. Also, school master schedules are tailored to the majority of students. If you take off-grade level courses you may find yourself shut out of some classes you wanted to take.

Have you researched the college English class, talked to people who took it? Do you think it will be better than the class you’re skipping? Why do you feel you won’t get much out of the English class you’re skipping–have you read most of the books already? If you are the only rising sophomore skipping into AP, won’t you be the only student in the college class as a senior? How would that work? Our school cancels classes with insufficient enrollment (usually need at least 10 students).

As far as “up to the challenge” and “ready for hell” comments, no I don’t think this schedule is unreasonable for a very talented student who is willing to work very hard. But every school is different and you would be well advised to talk to students at your own school about the workload on these courses. My concern is more about whether you will be loving school next year or feeling that it is indeed hell. Ask yourself that.

With regard to the italian, it’s pretty clear that you will miss out on learning some important grammar and vocabulary. Are you going to learn this on your own? You can but that also eats into your spare time.

17

@mathyone I was just trying to convey the difficulty of my courses, I apologize if it came off otherwise! And yes, it would make sense to take calculus in that way for physics courses, but I was stating that it doesn’t make sense to take Physics C without a calculus course, not that it doesn’t make sense for calculus in general for physics. I have already acknowledged these sacrifices, after all I keep asking if these difficult courses are WORTH IT for my future, not if they WILL BE difficult, which I already know the answer to. Skipping the English class is due to my current Honors 9 teacher, we constantly speak about novels and connect about essay topics in general, and she decided to recommend me to an AP Lang teacher. The AP Lang teacher read through a couple essays and admitted me into the class. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of class enrollment requirement, because my classes are already approved by both my counselor, current teachers, and future teachers. As I have previously stated, I’ve already spoken to older sophomores and even juniors and they have stated that classes like AP World are time-consuming, but AP Lang is a breeze, etc. My Italian teacher has provided me summer assignments and lessons to review, along with certain websites to consult to smooth the transition to Italian III; I also already know a couple other languages, and I have a knack for learning them, so I don’t expect it to be a problem.

I sincerely apologize if I seemed vague or naive, perhaps even rude, and I hope I cleared things up!

18

Whether the schedule will “set you apart” is debatable. I can say that the schedule will not set you apart if you do not do well in the classes. With a 3.7 freshman GPA, I believe you are overextending yourself. At my college, we have a saying: academics, social life, sleep - choose two. As a HS sophomore, it’s too soon for you to have to make that choice. Good luck.

19

I agree with @skieurope and @mathyone.

It’s not so much that AP history is hard, but there are several chapters of reading, essays to write, etc. Combine that with AP English which also requires a lot of reading, essays, etc. Then you add in chemistry, physics and precalc which will have lots of homework problems and third level language where you will have projects, etc.

Then you want to participate in a sport and several EC that require missing school.

Last year you had only AP ES and got a 3.7 gpa, which is good but doesn’t indicate that everything is a breeze for you.

20

Your core question is “is it worth it?”, and the question back is “for what?”

From your other thread, it appears that the answer is ‘for getting into HYPMS’

And the answer is, probably not.

Why?

  1. 9th grade results.

From your other thread you got B+ in history, math and (one) science this year. Those are fine results, but you are worried that they aren’t enough for HYPMS. Now you want to double down and do 2 sciences at once, an even bigger history curriculum (World is just a lot of material to get through), and do better in all of them than you did this year.

Your arms race approach ( “will this schedule set me apart from my peers in terms of course difficulty”“taking all AP sciences”) misses the point. Once your GC ticks the ‘most rigorous’ box and says something nice about how you challenged yourself, you have crossed that bridge. Nobody ever wins an arms race; there will always be somebody who has taken more/harder things than you. You just need to win your race.

You say that you are willing to do ‘whatever it takes’, but being willing and being able are not always the same thing. Having all those courses and a GPA that drops is likely to be counter-productive.

  1. The clock.

No matter what you do, the cold, hard fact of the matter is that you are limited to the same 24 hours in a day as everybody else. I am happy to trust your GC & teachers that you can handle the academic work, but can you manage enough time in the day to manage the volume of work? one thing that often trips students up is simply the physical time it takes to do all the reading/problems/projects.

Because once you have done all of the homework for those classes you still have to find time for your ECs- participating at a level that will lead to leadership positions over the following 2 years).

The amount of time that ECs require can vary by school, but in the schools that I know best genuine participation (of the sort that results in a leadership position) in Science Olympiad is a serious time commitment. You are also planning on increasing the amount of time you volunteer, and keeping a team sport (which eats time after school or weekends or both) and adding a new EC*.

*btw, the rule of thumb on ECS is that fewer+deeper >> more /shallower

[url=<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways%5DThis%5B/url”>http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways]This[/url] may be helpful for you. What is missing from your post is any sense of you, beyond your goal of getting into a name brand college. Most of the students that I know who get into those colleges have dreams and ambitions in which getting in to the name brand college is a stepping stone, not the end goal.