My daughter is currently a Junior. Her classes are as follows:
AP Psych
AP Chem
AP Lang
APUSH
AICE Business A level
Honors Precalc
Honors Theatre
She currently has a 3.9 unweighted. She has what she needs for test scores and extracurriculars. She wants to drop APUSH and take HONORS US History. She has never liked history and is more of a math person. She got an A in AP world and an A/B split in AP human. The APUSH teacher just has them copy down her PowerPoint presentations and doesn’t really teach. She is bored and miserable in the class, and feels like she has no life outside of studying. Will it really hurt her for UF if she goes down to honors? She really wants UF but I also want her to be happy and to enjoy high school.
Happy student is best priority. Drop the AP. Mental Health can be a real struggle, and the pressure on our HS kids is mounting. Finding a way to reduce the stress–go for it!
I agree with the consensus. Not every kid is great at everything and the universities know this. My son skipped APUSH last year and got, for him, an easy A in honors. He wasn’t excited about the class as he struggled in AP World. Drop it and don’t sweat it.
Ok so the AVP and the guidance counselor and the teacher called her in and convinced her to try it for a couple more weeks and promised to switch her if she isn’t happy or doing well. They told her that colleges want to see your rigor go up, not down. She went from 2/AP & 1 AICE Sophomore year to 4AP @ 1 AICE for junior year. Even if she went down to 3/1 she is still increasing her rigor. I know that she is smart enough to take the class, but I want the kid to be happy and not a miserable zombie that only studies and does nothing else. I guess if they will still switch her out we don’t have anything to lose.
Yeah, give the kid some peace of mind. That schedule is tough enough for a Junior without AP History. Remember though, GPA is at the top of the list for UF, with rigor right behind it. As we’ve been told numerous times by people who understand the process better than I, don’t sacrifice GPA for rigor.
Echoing @Anisqoyo, when I took my daughter on the UF tour two summers ago, before her senior year, we asked about the schedule and rigor. Believe it or not, the admissions guy was more concerned about kids taking the most possible academic units vs. taking more APs, specifically. I remember him saying something to the effect of: “you don’t have to go crazy with the APs.”
I think it’s important to look at the whole scope of your kid’s junior year, too. My son had three APs and two honors classes last year and then an honors photography class that UF doesn’t count. He had a part-time job for part of the year and was also working on his Eagle Scout project, which was a huge time commitment and stressor. In his case, APUSH would have been too much and as @Anisqoyo said: don’t sacrifice GPA for rigor.
@flprepaidmom This sounds exactly like my daughters junior year. She did honors US history with honors precalc and then 5 college level classes. My daughter just started senior year and has a 3.96 unweighted gpa. She too got A/B split in AP Human And AP World. Hates history. Those were her only 2 B’s. She got an A in honors US history. Remember it’s a year long class. So do not get a B cause it’s like getting 2 B’s since year long. But the stress level was significantly lower than the kids in APUSH. UF does not look at every single class down to the micro level. They look at the overall count of rigorous courses and of over the 3 years she took a lot of college level she is fine. 5 college level junior year is very rigorous