I have already signed up for my classes for senior year, but I am considering making a change to improve my well-roundedness.
My classes are:
AP American Gov’t
AP Calculus BC
AP Physics C
AP Statistics
Honors World Literature
Senior Thesis
Religion (i go to a catholic school, so it’s required)
I am considering switching from AP Statistics to Honors Latin IV in an effort to show my well-roundedness. I am curious if colleges would rather see 4 AP courses and no foreign language or 3 AP courses and a 4th year of Latin. Furthermore, AP Statistics would make 7 math credits for my 4 years of high school, which is quite a few.
Look at the requirements of the colleges you plan to apply to – a number of the top colleges recommend/require 4 yers of foreign language. If that is the case I’d definitely take Latin IV.
But in general I think Latin IV would be considered to have the same rigor as AP Stat. College admissions is not a race to see who gets the most APs.
Be careful with trying to appear well-rounded. It can mean uninteresting and without a particular talent. Maybe try to promote what you’re especially good at.
"I am considering switching from AP Statistics to Honors Latin IV "
I would STRONGLY recommend that change. Latin is a language that very few students take to level 4, so by doing so you WILL be setting your self apart from the vast majority of other applicants.
Colleges DONT care if a student has 6 or 7 AP classes.
When it comes to taking AP classes there is a diminishing returns effect. No APs vs taking 2 APs is a huge difference. Taking 2 APs vs taking 4 APs is still a big difference but less so. Taking 10 APs vs taking 12 APs is basically no difference to admissions. I’m taking about total APs here through all 4 years of HS.
Take what interests you the most, not what might appear better. If you want to do STEM, AP Stat will show more focus. It’s also a very useful class for social sciences as well.
@menloparkmom well it would leave me with 3 AP classes for the year
That’s fine!!
take an additional class that interests you, IF you have time.
but REMEMBER, the FIRST semester of your Sr year you will ALSO have essentially a part time job- applying to college, which can take a LOT of time.
Applications to fill out, Essays to write and rewrite, asking teachers to write LOR’s and then making sure they follow through and submit them, submitting tests scores to college, taking any additional standardized tests [ if needed] etc, etc.
All that in addition to your homework for classes, EC’s, etc.
you will find the first semester of your SR will be a lot of work.
Dont add to the burden, [and risk have your first semester grades tank] with unnecessarily taking an additional AP class because you think it will " look good" to colleges.
“When it comes to taking AP classes there is a diminishing returns effect. No APs vs taking 2 APs is a huge difference. Taking 2 APs vs taking 4 APs is still a big difference but less so.”
this is a sweeping oversimplification as well as being not true.
colleges look to see how many AP courses are offered. If only two are offered and a student takes 1 it is not a big deal, especially if there was no way they could take it due to scheduling issues or if the student was not allowed to take an AP level classes, due to what “slot” they started in.
@menloparkmom Of course the amount of AP courses offered at the school would be taken into consideration. But certainly you would agree that if the school offers 20 AP courses, taking 12 and taking 10 makes no big difference when colleges asses academic prowess, but taking 1 and taking none have a significant difference.
What matters more is where the student’s interests lie and how his/her course selection reflects that, as I have said.
The OP has shown concern that he/she would be seen as a “lesser” student by taking a non-AP (Latin) than an AP. I was simply addressing that concern by stating that taking more APs is valuable, but to a certain extent.
Also, what you called “a sweeping oversimplification as well as being not true” is actually most certainly true. You can’t compare number of APs with students of other schools. But within each school and overall, there is always a diminishing effect of taking more APs. Thus, generally people shouldn’t take more APs just to increase the number of APs on their transcript.
By saying “If only two are offered and a student takes 1 it is not a big deal” you are essentially agreeing with what I am saying.
Admissions officers want to see that you challenge yourself with classes, but up to a certain point they will value less the slight increments in APs and focus on other parts of the application.
so, @veagle18 i would suggest that you take the course that interests you the most, or perhaps gives you the most time for other things. I would imagine that Latin would have less work than AP Stats, but that may not be true. There is no need to further show colleges that you are “well-rounded” as you already have 3 years of a foreign language, nor is there a need to take AP Stats just to increase your AP number. There might be specific requirements for the colleges you are looking at, so that may be a factor. Also, consider your potential college major and how you want to angle yourself.
This is a toughie, and my first instinct is to say take the course that interests you more or perhaps has the better instructor because, after all, education is about learning and improving your mind. But unfortunately because of the highly competitive nature of the college application process, other practical considerations must be weighed. A few that come to mind, are the classes weighted differently for GPA/ranking purposes, will one class take less time and effort to make a top grade (@menloparkmom makes a great point in post #6), is 1 teacher a potentially strong LoR writer for you? Also you need to take a look at foreign language “suggestions” for the schools you are interested in as pointed out by @happy1 in post #1. Will you be automatically rejected if you only got to Latin III, no, but that’s a potential negative that may get thrown in the mix, but still it’s your overall body of work that is considered in the context of what your school offers.
then point that is missing is that THOUSANDS of students take AP Stats, oftern instead of harder math AP classes, because it is easier. known as a "whimpy’ AP.
if THE applicant has the "math chops’ to take AP Calc, then taking another math AP, the same year, will look to college admissons officers like he is just trying to increase his AP class count, and THAT
will NOT “impress” any college admissions committee, especially if the other AP class is known to be an easy one. Admissions officers see through this ploy to “look better” every year.
the NUMBER of AP classes taken , is FAR FAR less important than the RIGOR of the classes taken.
Taking a 4th year of a difficult , and rarely offered foreign language, such as Latin, which VERY few students do, will set him apart from not only his HS classmates, but also from thousands of other applicants from other HS’s.
"You can’t compare number of APs with students of other schools. "
of course you can. Admissions officers certainly could, but they dont.
BUT students dont KNOW that they dont- they assume it is “one big horse race” for each college and the “student with the most AP’s wins”. Hence the “mania” to increase the # of AP classes, regardless of whether it makes sense or not for the individual student.
I’ve been on CC for 13 years and this nutty AP race just keeps gets worse and worse each year, and the ones who pay the price are the students who fall for that trap.
So OP- stick with the HARDER 4th year NON AP foreign language class, rather then an EASY AP math class.
If you are aiming at the most selective colleges that recommend or require level 4 foreign language, you would be at a disadvantage in admission if you only have level 3. In addition, many colleges have foreign language graduation requirements, so completing a higher level in high school can help you complete such a requirement with fewer courses needed in college.
AP statistics emulates a non-calculus-based one semester introductory statistics course; in both colleges and high schools, such statistics courses are often taken by students who need to fulfill a quantitative or math requirement but do not want to take calculus. Students whose majors require or recommend statistics (e.g. statistics, some engineering majors, economics, business, biology, etc.) may be required to take a calculus-based statistics course instead, or may find that a calculus-based statistics course is more useful.
In older posts, you have indicated that your top choice college is BC. If that is still the case then definitely take Latin IV. Per BC’s website, “We recommend that students pursue four years of coursework in English, social science, mathematics, foreign language, and laboratory science.” A school like BC is highly competitive and not having the recommended coursework could put your application at a disadvantage – many highly qualified applicants will be sure to fulfill the recommendations. http://www.bc.edu/admission/undergrad/process/freshman.html
And "prestigious"colleges are also mentioned.
I don’t think we have any idea what rigor you’ve taken so far, so how can we tell if you have the right mix?
Thing is, OP, you’ve asked a lot of questions related to stats, standing, and courses and I wonder if you do understand what competitive colleges want to see beyond that. The rest of the story can be what defines one candidate over another.