This is my senior year of high school, and I’m currently going to enroll in AP Gov & AP Econ, AP Spanish, AP Statistics & AP English Lit / Comp. I took AP Biology freshman year, had a solid B+ throughout the class and scored a 3. I didn’t take any AP’s sophmore year, and I’m currently in APUSH & AP Physics 1 (I have B’s in both classes).
I’m planning on majoring in economics, and AP Gov & Econ are offered as 1 class so I have to take this. I need AP Spanish because I’ve spent 3 years studying spanish and I want to finish taking the last class.
To compensate for all the hard classes, I’m taking forensic science & graphic design - they’re both supposed to be easy classes at my school. Is it worth is to take all those AP’s or should I think about dropping one?
You say you are taking two APs this year and getting solid Bs. Do you think you will be able to sustain Bs and Cs if you go from 2 APs to 5? Senior year grades are not as important as Junior year’s, but, if you are in California, you will definitely need to make sure no Fs or Ds at all, otherwise you could risk your admission offers.
As for the original question, I don’t think this is undoable (some of my friends and I are taking the same amount this year), but if you’re getting B’s with only two AP classes it will be difficult to keep up when you more than double that work. Especially since you’ll have to do a lot of writing to practice for some of the exams.
Also I agree with the above commenters about getting some calc experience if you plan to major in economics. At my school, stats is a semester course. Is it the same for you?
I meant, to major in Economics. A minimum of 1 semester of calc will be required for Econ, sometimes 2 (including Applied Calculus sometimes).
AP Econ doesn’t require calculus indeed.
AP Spanish depends on how strong you are at Spanish right now. Taking it along with AP Econ/Gov makes sense.
AP Stats is relatively easy if you have a strong background in math.
AP English Lit/Comp will be difficult, and AP Gov/Econ will require focus to keep up with the information and skills required.
What do your teachers think?
Ideally, if you can keep up and get at least a B, your schedule would be very good.
The two classes you can change are AP English Lit for Senior English Honors or AP Stats for another math class.
I had a similar schedule my senior year with 4 APs and graphic design. It worked pretty well for me and I took less APs than you for 9th-11th grade. This was a pandemic year though so most of my tests were open-book (besides the APs). But if you are excited about I say go for it! Colleges love to see a challenging senior year schedule and if something gets to be too much you can always drop.
That’s true!
Most colleges want to see a challenging senior schedule but public and private universities will look at it differently:
public universities will typically simply ask that you get no D’s and no F’s or you’ll be rescinded, so that even if you falter a bit and get a C, you’re ok.
However, many selective private universities will request your first quarter or even first semester grades. If you have 4 B’s in AP classes, you’ll be good. But if you have Cs or Ds…
What math have you completed? The economics major commonly requires calculus (and sometimes math beyond that), so precalculus is the minimum math you should complete in high school. If you complete precalculus in 11th grade or earlier, it is best to continue to calculus if available to you.
Personally I think that schedule looks good. It will depend on your school how rigorous those courses are, but they are not necessarily considered to be ‘difficult’ AP courses in terms of heir content. As long as you think you could pull all As/Bs by the mid-year report, I would go for them.
I’ve heard that AP Gov/Econ is relatively easy at my school, the only class I’m mainly worried about is AP Lit because English isn’t too much of my strong suit. The only reason I’m thinking about taking this many AP classes is because I’ve only taken a couple during high school, and I’ve heard that colleges prefer if you challenge yourselves.
@MYOS1634 I’m only applying to public universities as my family can’t afford private. But thank you for your advice! I’m mainly aiming for the UC’s and the CSU’s.
I think you would better served taking any Calculus rather than AP Stats. AP Stats is nice but not one of the more difficult AP classes. Plus it doesn’t move the needle for most admissions. Georgia Tech doesn’t give any credits for it.
Run the NPC on each of Occidental, UPuget Sound, DePauw, Lewis&Clark, and LMU-LA to see whether they’re unaffordable (their price tag is high, but they offer scholarships and discounts - I chose these because they each calculate differently so the results should show you if 1 or 2 are ok). Running the NPC will tell you exactly whether these would be more or less expensive than UCs.
For CSUs, an AP is an AP – except Cal Poly SLO.
For UCs, they’ll only use your 10-11th grades results and only want no D, no F senior year while counting senior year course rigor in your favor. So your selection makes a lot of sense.
@chmcnm I’m not looking to apply to Georgia Tech at this point, simply because it is out of state. Also, from my experience in pre-calculus, I don’t think I’d do too well in Calculus just because it’s not very interesting to me.
@MYOS1634 I did the NPC on a couple of them, and I saw that I probably won’t get too much scholarships and such. But I’ll try the others thank you! To clarify, I should keep my schedule the way it is because of course rigor?
Yes.
The only change I’d consider is switching AP Lit-> Honor English and AP Stats-> AP Calc AB.
AP Calc AB covers over 9-10 months/40 weeks, 5 periods a week, what you’ll have to cover in college over 14 weeks and 3 periods a week. In other words, if you scored a 3+ it’d save you from having to take the class in college while making it much more manageable (basically you’d have 180 periods to cover the same amount of knowledge as what in college you’d have 40 periods to cover.)
All business majors have to take and pass calculus, some have to take more than one class in this subject.
You can look at the requirements for a business major at your local CSU, but here’s a random example at Cal Poly Pomona: https://www.cpp.edu/cba/technology-and-operations-management/ebz-curriculum/ebz-semester-curriculum.shtml
We don’t have an Honors English. We have regular English or AP Lit for senior year.
As for Calc, I believe I read that I would have to take Calculus regardless of whether I took it in high school for economics, so I thought that I would just take AP Stats just to make senior year slightly easier.
– except Cal Poly SLO.