To GPA kill or not to GPA kill?

<p>Is it worth sacrificing GPA (and life, and potentially chances at college admissions) to take the classes you want?</p>

<p>When checking out the scatter gram of college admission profiles virtually every student who got into Cal, UCLA etc is 3.9/2200, 50% are at 3.8/2100 range and the chances virtually diminish afterwards. These figures gives little consideration to the course load; almost no one got rejected with a 3.9/2200.</p>

<p>The course in question is AP US History. A class notorious for the mind-numbing workload and revered the insight it gives. The teacher is awesome. The students are top-notch.. and... almost no one gets an A. (Not to imply that SAT directly correlates to intelligence but maybe it means something that the three people I know who got an A got 2350-2400 SAT) Besides I'll be starting the year off with an F, don't ask, basically an A is impossible right now--but a B is likely (with a lot of hard, mind-numbing etc) work.</p>

<p>Do you guys think it's worth investing all that extra effort and ultimately getting a B (and even risking some more B's in my other classes: Calc, Bio, CS, Am Lit and Spanish) or is it better to just take classes where I can virtually assure a 4.0?</p>

<p>I love my APUSH teacher. Sure, I got 2 F’s in a row, but she is just amazing.</p>

<p>Hahah did you really get double F’s?
Does APUSH hinder the rest of your work/studying?</p>

<p>I honestly can say that it did hinder my studies. APUSH took majority of my time to just finish my work. I mean not even doing it fabulously, just doing bare minimum. So I usually get 1-2 chapters to outline and 20-40 documents to analyze every week and add on 5-6 FRQs due every 2 weeks… Yes it takes up a lot of time. But I love all the stories she tells though… I don’t know if that was a good trade off for my grades.</p>