Useful Electives or Useless AP classes???

Applying to College
1

Ivy League or UC hopeful applicant here, guys. So, I have been scrolling through CC for a while now, and I constantly see people taking like 3 honors and 4 AP classes in junior year, etc. HOW ON EARTH?!? lol

However, there is always people who seem to take AP classes completely unrelated to their majors (future engineering student taking APUSH??? why??? two extra hours of hw a night for what???)

I go to a competitive high school where people are like that too. They are just like zombies everyday, not learning anything in class, but just plowing through and going through the motions to get an A.

My question is: Should I be taking AP classes that are not very related or useful to my major, or electives/non AP core classes that are very much related to my intended major. And should I take non-AP core classes if they don’t relate to my major? I’m asking because I can actually be doing something more useful rather than taking meaningless AP classes.

Intended Major: nursing

I’m a current sophomore, and my choices would go like this (1) useless AP vs. (2) useful elective/ non-AP that doesn’t apply to my intended major.

Junior:
(1) AP English Language vs. (2) CP English 11
AP Calculus BC
AP Chemistry
(1) US History Honors OR APUSH vs. (2) Psychology <–no AP psych, unfortunately
French III
PE

Senior:
(1) AP English Literature vs. (2) CP English 12
AP Statistics
(1) AP Biology vs. (2) Human Physiology <— no honors :frowning:
AP French Language
AP Economics
PE

As you can see, my main concern is APENG. I want to get into UPenn nursing or UCLA nursing, or something of the sort, but I don’t know if I should take AP classes that don’t apply to my future major. Psychology and Human Anatomy are CP core classes, but they will definitely be interesting to me and help me in the future.

Advice , anyone?
Ive been posting a lot lately lol

2

My intended major is science related yet I’ve taken AP NSL, APUSH, and APWH (currently). It’s good that you are thinking about how these classes will play a role in your future.
For me, our history department is excellent, and I figured I’d rather knock out my history credits in high school rather than wait till college to do them. All majors, regardless of what school you attend, will require to fulfill basic requirements (history, math, english blah blah) before you take more specialized classes. So while you think it may be wasting your time now, it could really save you from having to buy one bigaf history textbook that you’ll never touch again and from writing stupid essays while you could be doing something else in college. I got a 3 on nsl and 5 on apush, and im expecting another 4 or 5 on whap, so im done with history forever this year.
On the other hand, if you find an elective that might be extremely interesting or helpful down the road, you really can’t go wrong with taking them. Surely your gpa might be a little off if its not weighted as heavily as another ap class, but colleges will see the classes you take and still believe that you are challenging yourself. Anatomy and physiology is a great class that you’ll need eventually, and it cant hurt to take psychology.

I’d look into the colleges you want to apply to, see what general requirements you will need to fulfill your freshman/sophomore years of college, and see how much credit they give you for whatever scores you think you can get. In the long run, im trying to get rid of as many “basic” classes that I can in college. That saves me money on textbooks and time from irrelevant classes from my future major. And if the schools you are applying to are costly, graduating in three years instead of four can save you k’s.

Good luck :slight_smile:

3

You are going to have to take courses that seem “unrelated” to your major once you’re in college, too.

But notice that I put “unrelated” in scare-quotes, though—all these courses that you seem to be prospectively thinking of as having no point because they don’t relate to nursing actually do have a point, in that they’re (a) broadening your horizons a bit, and (b) more generally teaching you how to learn. (And I’m not just talking about AP classes here—I’m talking about all classes.)

The big advantage of AP classes, actually, isn’t so much preparing you for a particular course of study, it’s that they provide you with some level of advanced subject matter and (if they’re done correctly) rigor. Secondarily, they can allow you to enter college with a few credits already out of the way, thus giving you a bit of extra curricular freedom from the start.

Also, about 80% of US college students change their major at least once after they first declare one in college—so don’t be so quick, as a high school student, to presume that you know with certainty what you’re going to be focusing on in the future, and thus think you should be focusing on now.

4

In the US, high school is mainly oriented toward general education, so college-prep students are expected to take a well rounded selection of English, math, history, science, foreign language, and art as a baseline, with some space in the schedule for additional electives of interest. This means that they will be prepared for many majors when they enter college, since many high school seniors and college frosh are not completely decided on their majors. This is unlike some other countries, where educational specialization starts in high school or even middle school, but changing tracks may be difficult or require extra time to “catch up” in the new specialization.

5

My Comp Sci guy didn’t want to take APUSH. (Which is not an extra two hours of homework at our school by any means.) I pointed out to him he could take it in high school and then with a good enough score he would probably get credit for it in college and not have to take history there. Which is exactly what happened. In our high school there’s a huge gap between the kids taking AP level courses and the regular ones, especially if they don’t also offer an honors section. Everyone in his cohort was taking APUSH. That is not to say you need to take every AP class - I did let him skip both the AP English and AP Lit courses - he still got into Havard and Carnegie Mellon - but it was a risky decision. The rest of his schedule was quite demanding, so that was the one area he eased up a bit.

6

Wouldn’t your high school require you to take some form of US History? That’s a class that is important for every intended major or job. High school is the time to lay a good foundation. You can specialize in college. But agree, you do not need to go crazy with APs

7

Ask your GC what you need for them to rate your schedule as "most rigorous.’ No one is going to require all APs. My engineering son opted to go with APs in social sciences and foreign language (in addition to the math, science and CS), but is skipping AP Lit – counselor thought it was plenty hard.

As explained above, it still may be worth your while to take the AP englishes and place out of those requirements in college. Or chose one – AP Lit is considered much more rigorous (lots o’ reading) than AP Eng. Lang.

8

If you want to aim for the Ivy Leagues and top UCs, then you need rigorous coursework in all 5 subject areas (English, math, science, social science, and language), not just those relevant for your intended major.

Classes like APUSH and AP English are taken by the majority of students who’ve taken at least one AP.