Taking half as many AP classes Junior Year as Sophomore Year - seen as a drop in course rigor?

This year, I took four APs.
Next year, I plan on taking only Gov and Lang as my only APs.

For science, the typical progression for advanced students at my school is honors physical science → honors bio → honors chem → ap chem, ap bio, or ap physics senior year. I deviated from this by taking Honors Bio over the summer and Physics C this year because I was really interested in the class and still had the Calculus fresh in my mind. I don’t want to take Honors Chem online over the summer, so I’ll take Honors Chem at school next year (will colleges look down upon this even though it is following progression, because I’ve already deviated so much from it?) And I’m taking Honors Spanish.

For math, I’ve settled on taking Calc 3/Differential Eqs w/ Linear Algebra at my local state uni.

My course progression is quite out of the ordinary—how would colleges view these changes? In reality, my courseload next year won’t be easier than this year, but the number of APs is halved.

I could take AP Macro/Micro online (Econ seems like a decent course to take online), but maybe that will be too much for me to handle. I was planning on taking the AP Econs at school senior year, where my courseload will look something like
AP Lit, AP Macro/Micro, AP Spanish, AP Stats, and AP Chem or Bio.

Don’t worry about the number of APs, worry about the rigor of your classes.
So Calc 3 is rigorous even though it isn’t an “AP”.
Do talk with your GC…make sure they think it is all reasonable.

Your schedule sounds rigorous. Most students don’t take Calc 3 or Differential Equations in high school, nevermind in their junior year. I think these courses are just as hard, if not more than, an AP course.

See if your schedule permits you to get the “most rigorous courseload taken” box checked off for college admissions.

In general, if your GC rates your schedule as “most demanding,” no AO is going to analyze course by course, year by year. Plus it’s not simply AP courses; it’s courses at the level of AP or beyond, and calc 3 is certainly beyond.

@skieurope @h8annah Ok, thanks. I just found out I won’t be able to take Calc 3 because all the classes are in the evening; I can only take differential equations, which usually comes after Calc 3, but for some reason at this university, everyone takes Differential Equations after Calc 2, and that’s the only class which works for me time wise. Instead, I’ll be taking a CS class which is the one that follows APCSA (or should, in theory).

Differential Equations is till rigorous! I took DE before Calc III, and at this point, the exact order of your math progression doesn’t matter anymore. In my DE class, a handful of students had already taken Calc III but a handful hadn’t. Taking an advanced Computer Science is still great, and you can always try to take Calc III senior year and maybe Linear Alg.

@h8annah I genuinely don’t think I can fit a college course into my senior year schedule—I know AP stats isn’t looked as very rigorous but is that fine for senior year considering I’ll have already taken DE and colleges understand that its Senior Year and I’ve already gone above my school’s most rigorous course path?