<p>In my school you don't really choose your classes at first. Honors classes are pretty much all the bright students in one room, while non honors had all the jokers with a few that weren't. In 9th Grade honors was just given based on your grades in middle school, and i ended up having honors geometry and biology, but no honors language arts due to having a couple B's in that class I guess in 8th grade. Those were the only honors classes available in 9th grade and no AP classes either. I didn't really worry about it much for some reason, but in 10th grade I had asked to be honors language arts while taking an AP Class (U.S. History). However I got screwed out of some honors because there was "no room", and ended up taking regular chemistry and language arts in 10th grade first semester. Second semester I had them fixed. Here's how my classes looked so far.</p>
<p>9th grade semester 1 and 2
honors geometry
honors biology
language arts 1 and 2
world history
french
P.E.</p>
<p>10th grade semester 1
honors algebra 2
language arts
chemistry
computer applications (got forced in this class too)
french
A.P U.S. History</p>
<p>10th grade semester 2
honors algebra 2
honors language arts
honors chemistry
intro to 2-d art
french
A.P U.S. History</p>
<p>In my school honors doesn't add to your gpa, and rightfully so as the classes were not really harder. Based on my experience, if a teacher taught an honors class alongside a regular class, the honors class would just get some more problems. However, some teachers were way easier than others (with one teacher, all the kids had A's except for one B, in an honors class).</p>
<p>I found honors language arts to be not harder at all, just the teacher gave more work which is obviously dependent on what type of teacher you get. I found the regular chemistry class to be much harder than honors, mostly due to the teacher. When I had regular for one thing I was in a class filled with mostly screw ups, but honestly there was much more work to be done. We had labs every week and work to do, and the teacher would not go through the chapter and you would have to read it yourself. In honors absolutely no work out of school had to be done. The teacher would give notes on the chapter that covered everything, making reading it not necessary. Everyone received As on the homework, the whole class process was one day he gives out the notes, the next day he shows us how to do the homework problems, rinse and repeat for the whole semester. Only one lab was done in that class. Regular chemistry moved much faster. </p>
<p>However now I'm reading that colleges look at honors as important because it shows that you chose hard classes and challenged yourself bla bla bla. Except in my school they're not really harder and you really don't have a choice in the classes. My counselor really would not help, (I asked for honors and she just told me all spots were full, sorry)</p>
<p>So I guess what I'm asking is if I should be worried? Right now I'm taking three AP Classes, language arts, chemistry, and government. Honors precalculus, and theater to gain back my art credit required. My last class is a college class.</p>
<p>Which also brings me to another question, is dual enrollment important? I was only able to take one college class due to being forced to take computer applications in 10th grade. It does count as an AP class on the gpa scale, which is dumb considering their 1000x easier than any class. Taking six classes in high school would honestly be more challenging as you would have less time to finish work at home, but of course the gpa would not show this.</p>