This year I’m taking AP Psych, AP Lang, and APUSH. I’ve gotten A’s, but I’ve also never taken a STEM AP before. Next year I’m planning on taking:
AP Bio
AP Chem
AP Lit
AP Gov
AP Calc AB
anatomy (joke class at our school)
physics (pretty easy)
I’m only planning on applying to a handful of colleges (3-5), but I’m not sure how much time that will take up. Is this manageable? Will I regret this senior year? Will I miss out on important memories because I’m busy studying?
I don’t know. How well are you prepared to take the AP courses? How many kids in your school take this sort of load and how do they tend to do both on the AP Exams and grade wise? Is this normal at your school? Also more importantly, how do you feeel about this and what kind of student are you?
My kids took all APs pretty much by senior year but they were taking them all along the way and this was the path their school had set for them. It was business as usual. But they didn’t have two AP sciences in any one year. They also had a foreign language AP that senior year so their senior year Sched on average (and Typical for their schools ) were AP science, AP math, AP English, AP language, AP social studies ( usually Government)
Two lab courses can be a challenge. It’s generally not recommended to take AP chem and bio in the same year.
It’s doable – one of my kids (and some of the kid’s friends) took 5 or 6 APs in both their junior and senior years – but of course it requires a lot of lot of work, especially if (in the case of my kid) it’s on top of doing a sport. So be prepared for a lot of late nights and not a lot of socializing outside of school/ECs. My spouse and I actually tried to convince TigerKid to cut back on the number of APs (the school requires parents and students to sign a waiver if the student wants to take more than 4 AP classes) or at least to take calc AB instead of BC, but we weren’t successful. It turned out fine, but again, it was a lot of work and frequently required sacrificing opportunities for fun.
That said, I agree with momofsenior1 that taking two tough AP science courses at the same time isn’t ideal.
it’s too much. you also have physics and anatomy? this is not going to impress colleges. they will see it as a last ditch effort to pad your application and won’t expect you to have the intention of seeing it through to a good end of year grade and score. Pick either Bio or Chem- and if you pick Bio then drop Anatomy and do something else with that time.
A 4th year of language will impress colleges more.
4 sciences in the same year is wayyy overkill.
Take anatomy, physics, and AP chem AT MOST and only if anatomyreally is a joke class, otherwise AP chem and physics “only”. (Unfortunately if you’ve not taken Physics, you need it as it’s one of the core Science classes. )
Don’t expect to apply to 3-5 colleges only unless your parents have saved 200k in a college fund that is at no risk of being needed for other expenses (we’re in a crisis that combined the 1918-1920 “flu”, with the great depression so this is going to be a HUGE problem for let families).
Run the NPC and apply to lots of colleges where you hope to get a scholarship (most money comes from the colleges themselves). There’ll be LOTS of students in need of admission with scholarship so that admission itself might be a bit easier but scholarships may be harder to come by. Definitely plan to apply to several instate public universities and their honors colleges; if you’re lower income, look into Questbridge.
While I don’t personally know you, I will say that objectively, AP Bio as well as AP Chem in the same year is literally suicide. Why are you taking so many AP’s? Is it out of interest for the subjects, or simply to impress colleges? I’d say that if your aim is to solely impress colleges, and you don’t actually have an interest in Bio or Chem, don’t take the gamble. It’s a lot and I mean A LOT of material to digest, and that isn’t even with the consideration of AP Gov and Calc. Gov is a pretty textbook heavy subject as well that’ll require a lot of time and retaining.
Now, I’m not saying all this to scare you from your workload by any means. You may have been taking AP’s the entirety of your high school career and find yourself able to easily manage the workload, but I do think that you’ll have a challenging time during your fall semester. Even if you are a stellar student, the workload in addition to college essays will be a bit much. During college essay season, I didn’t even have anytime to relax. None of my friends did actually! We all went into auto pilot and just lived at our desk, moving back and forth between AP’s and college essays. Given, I did apply to about 10 schools, but I was also taking 5 AP’s and it’s impossible to juggle a social life, academics, as well as college essays. While you’re only applying to a handful of school’s, the quality of your essays may suffer because of your workload. Discuss your options with parents or your counselor. Best of luck either way!