Title says it all- also, how many did you take each year? Is there anything in your schedule you would change, looking back?
It depends a lot on the student, but here are some guesstimates:
Freshman: 1-2
Sophomore: 2-3
Junior: 3-5
Senior: 4-6
This is assuming that you attend a school without block scheduling and 7 classes per day. At my school, for mildly competitive students, it’s usually 1, 1, 3, 4-7, where you have two semester classes as a senior and E&M and Mechanics are combined… For some of the really competitive kids, it’s 2, 4, 6, 8. Which is ridiculous. For me, it’s looking like 1, 1-2, 4, 8.
While it is certainly feasible to take 6 AP’s senior year, it’s not something I would ever recommend. In addition to the “normal” routine, the Fall semester of Senior year is also spent writing college apps and essays, which almost every student underestimates the time required.
For me, I averaged 2-3 AP classes each year.
In terms of AP? No.
At my high school no freshman can take an AP. There simply is too many pre requsities for the APs at my school that it isn’t possible to take any freshman year.
Sophomore year, provided you don’t take chemistry over the summer or anything crazy like that, you can only take one, AP Physics 1/2, since we take Physics freshman year.
Junior year the majority take 2, one of which is AP US History and the other which people choose between AP Stats and AP Chem depending how hard you want your schedule to be. You cannot take both unless you push back one of the normal junior classes to senior year, which I’ve never heard of anyone doing. Several people at my school also chose to take Pre Calc over the summer before junior year so they take AP Calc AB junior year, in which case they could have 3 APs.
Senior year is a free for all with APs. You have to take an English class, so people choose between AP Lit and AP Lang. Then most people take AP Calc for a math, AP Bio, AP Language (Spanish, French, Italian, or Chinese), AP Psych or AP US Government, and AP Stat or Chem if not previously taken. Most people don’t take all 6 APs this year though, they do 5 and choose which 5.
Even for super competitive kids, this is what they do. Our honors classes are hard, as hard as any AP class I’ve had, so its not like they are a walk in the park though.
I’m only a Sophomore right now and I currently signed up for 9 classes (7 at my high school, 2 on part time virtual school) 2 of my classes are AP’s (AP World History, & AP Psychology) and honestly I’m doing just fine despite my guidance counselor trying to talk me out of doing more than 1 AP.
I guess it really depends on the student though like I feel like I could handle a couple more but there may be some that wouldn’t be able to handle any.
I didn’t take any APs in my freshman year, my school didn’t offer any for freshman (they changed this in my senior year I think because they just started offering AP Human geo for freshmen)
Took 1 AP class in sophomore year, but took 2 exams since I prepared for the other test through other means than my high school. The norm when I was a sophomore was that everyone only took WHAP- this changed a lot just after two years, as several sophomores were taking 2, even 3 AP classes by the time I graduated.
Junior - 5, this was the max that most people took in junior/senior year.
Senior - 7 yes, I went a little crazy in my last year with course rigor, everything turned out fine though!
No regrets over the AP classes that I took, I was able to get a huge amount of credits transferred into college; completely done with gen-eds, I can basically focus on my major and other interests.
So far I have taken
Freshmen:
0 (freshmen can’t take any)
Sophomore (1) Currently
AP Gov
I’m only a sophomore but I plan on taking
Junior (2)
APUSH
AP Psychology
Senior (1)
Science (don’t know yet)
To be honest that’s all I’m taking because that’s all I want to take. I’m not taking some ridiculous number like 25 because a) they’re not interesting to me, why take them? B) I don’t want to do 10 hours of homework everyday and C) I’ve seen @skieurope mention in other posts the law of diminishing return (did I get it right?) where after like 6-8 APs admissions don’t really gain anything by taking an extra AP. I know I’m only taking 4, but that’s what I’m comfortable with.
@MPC6789 For admissions purposes, yes, with the caveat that all top colleges will expect applicants to take the most rigorous courseload that they can handle. However, if the school offers few or no AP courses, obviously they can’t take 6-8 AP courses, and colleges are OK with that.
@skieurope yes of course, thanks for mentioning that since I forgot to
Freshman: 1-2
Sophomore: 2
Junior: 3-4
Senior: 4
My best year was junior year and I took 3 (and computer science–she taught the honors kids the same thing she did AP and graded us the same). It was just right. Past 5 is too much, in my opinion.
Pro Tip: Don’t take six APs senior year. Also I’ve noticed that AP Bio (busywork galore), AP French, and AP English Lit is a particularly ugly combination, at least at my school.
I think a reasonable amount would be:
Freshman year: 1-2
Sophomore year: 1-2
Junior year: 3-4
Senior year: 4-5
At my school, freshmen and sophomores can’t take any APs, the course isn’t offered to them. Last year as a freshman, I had taken the AP Chinese test, but I had to learn outside of my high school.
Junior year, people take 2-3 APs, usually chem, eng lang, and APUSH.
Senior year, it varies widely so idk what they take, my guess is, they take 3-4, probably Calc AB or BC, Eng Lit, World or Euro, and a language AP (french, spanish, etc.)
I would probably take 4 junior year and 5-6 senior year. Which ones would you guys recommend?
I took:
Freshman - 0 (My school doesn’t let you take APs until sophomore year)
Sophomore - 1 (Only 2 APs are offered to sophomores, and one was Calc AB, which I took Junior year)
Junior - 4
Senior - 5
Since my HS runs on a block schedule (meaning I only take ~4 classes each semester), I’ve found taking 4-5 APs relatively manageable. Granted, I’m still extremely busy. I know people who have taken 6 in a year, but I wouldn’t do more than that.
Regardless, I think it’s best to build it up. Take no more than 1 AP freshman year; you’re only just getting used to high school! Maybe 1-2 sophomore year, 3-4 junior year, and 5-6 senior year if you think you can handle it. Don’t push yourself past your limits. At the same time, though, I’ve found that the workload of taking more APs is never as bad as I feared it would be.