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6 AP classes

Zhuli Lily Askar

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I want to take this load next year, junior year of Highschool? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life? Anybody here have experience with this?

1 AP Chinese- easy
2 AP Psychology - said to be easy
3 AP Chemistry - very hard, shall prestudy
4 AP Literature - hard (unless I get the easy teacher)
5 AP Statistics - said to be easy
6 AP United States History - I don't know.
7 Honors Pre-calculus - Said to be kind of hard, will prestudy.
 

Tyrinth

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How are you determining the difficulty of your courses?

I took AP Chem back in high school, and it wasn't especially difficult. If taught correctly they should be on par with the lower college levels of the course, which you should honestly be about ready for by late high school.

Honestly, whether or not the course-load is correct (manageable) is more dependent upon the person than the courses taken, so I'm not quite sure how much help anyone can be.

Edit: Although I have to admit, taking all of those AP tests at the end doesn't seem like it would be fun with that many classes. Or maybe it would be for you.
 
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mujigay

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It depends on where you go to school, and the teachers that you get. Also, AP classes are all about smart time management. Block off time for each class and stick to that schedule, and you'll go far. Don't cram for the AP exams the night before, you'll just fall asleep the next day because those things are like three or four hours apiece.

Also, about AP Chemistry: I took it last year. It was a bastard of a class, but that was because the teacher for Chem was married to the calc teacher so their tests and quizzes were always on the same day. Furthermore, she made her tests significantly harder than the exam itself and there were weekly night labs. I'm not sure how it's gonna work out at your school, but if it works the same way, make sure you have time for those night labs!

If it makes you feel any better, here's my course schedule for this year:

AP Japanese
AP Studio Art: 2D Design
AP English Literature
AP Psychology
AP Human Geography
AP Statistics
AP US Government
AP Economics
AP Physics
 

DiscoBiscuit

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AP is for mortals.

IB is for demigods.

j/k (sorta). You should be fine if you can come to grips with the fact that your social life will take a hit.
 

Zhuli Lily Askar

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It depends on where you go to school, and the teachers that you get. Also, AP classes are all about smart time management. Block off time for each class and stick to that schedule, and you'll go far. Don't cram for the AP exams the night before, you'll just fall asleep the next day because those things are like three or four hours apiece.

Also, about AP Chemistry: I took it last year. It was a bastard of a class, but that was because the teacher for Chem was married to the calc teacher so their tests and quizzes were always on the same day. Furthermore, she made her tests significantly harder than the exam itself and there were weekly night labs. I'm not sure how it's gonna work out at your school, but if it works the same way, make sure you have time for those night labs!

If it makes you feel any better, here's my course schedule for this year:

AP Japanese
AP Studio Art: 2D Design
AP English Literature
AP Psychology
AP Human Geography
AP Statistics
AP US Government
AP Economics
AP Physics

How can you take 9 ap classes 7 max at my school ==
How are you going to sleep.
Why would this make me feel better.

Anyways everyone. I might graduate early so I'll get back to this later if I don't.
 

ygolo

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For what it's worth, I really encourage high school kids to take AP courses and community college courses (especially the sciences).

It may seem like a big risk to grades and a lot of work now. But if you start college as a science or engineering major without a bunch of APs, your freshman year is going to be hell. Consider a Junior AND Senior year's worth of AP science/math classes packed into your Freshman year of college.

The jump to college is going to be tough anyways. It would be good to limit the number of 350+ student, 4 to 5 credit, science and math classes you need to take at the same time. As an undergrad, I was lucky to be able to skip all this, and I didn't realize how good that luck was.

Having TA'd for one giant class, and having audited another, I will tell you that these classes are like being infantry on an academic battlefield during the days of trenches and machine guns. Who "survives" (as in doesn't fail) is very random.

You could get a class with an instructor and TA that doesn't match your learning style in the least. Many times, some of the professors haven't learned how to teach, and many of the TAs are jaded and vindictive. Pretty much without exception, the grades are based off of two to three really big exams. Have one bad test day, and forget about an A. Have two, and you may be close to failing. Get a vindictive or impatient TA grading your exam, and you can forget about partial credit (whereas a more well-adjusted one may look to figure out what you tried).

Yeah, so take APs. Spread out the work, and avoid the giant classes in college.
 

The Great One

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I want to take this load next year, junior year of Highschool? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life? Anybody here have experience with this?

1 AP Chinese- easy
2 AP Psychology - said to be easy
3 AP Chemistry - very hard, shall prestudy
4 AP Literature - hard (unless I get the easy teacher)
5 AP Statistics - said to be easy
6 AP United States History - I don't know.
7 Honors Pre-calculus - Said to be kind of hard, will prestudy.

I'd say go for it. I wish I would have taken AP classes in high school. I wouldn't have to be in school for so long to get a degree if I had.
 

ygolo

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AP is for mortals.

IB is for demigods.

j/k (sorta). You should be fine if you can come to grips with the fact that your social life will take a hit.

This may have changed since I was in high school, but my HS favored APs since there was a clear system, back then, for getting college credit (get a 5 on the AP exam) but nothing about how the IB course gave college credit (At the time, it was a small program in my area, and looked on with skepticism for possibly overemphasizing "route learning").

We also had a program where we simultaneously enrolled in classes at a near by university so we could get college credit for classes like linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and differential equations.

There were other courses, like supercomputing applications, elements of artificial intelligence, structured computer organization, analog design, and digital design that had college equivalents, but did not give us college credit. Some, like engineering thermodynamics and complex analysis, I found out later, were the equivalents of what was being taught in graduate school.

I guess, my point is that whether it is AP, IB, or whatever other system you have, see if you know how to get college credit.

Even if it doesn't get you college credit, if it's fun, and you like to learn, no need to limit yourself.
 

mmhmm

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This may have changed since I was in high school, but my HS favored APs since there was a clear system, back then, for getting college credit (get a 5 on the AP exam) but nothing about how the IB course gave college credit (At the time, it was a small program in my area, and looked on with skepticism for possibly overemphasizing "route learning").

We also had a program where we simultaneously enrolled in classes at a near by university so we could get college credit for classes like linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and differential equations.

Other courses, like supercomputing applications, elements of artificial intelligence, structured computer organization, analog design, and digital design had college equivalents, (some, like engineering thermodynamics and complex analysis, I found out later, were the equivalents of what was being taught in graduate school). These courses were fun but did not give us college credit.

I guess, my point is that whether it is AP, IB, or whatever other system you have, see if you know how to get college credit.

Even if it doesn't get you college credit, if it's fun, and you like to learn, no need to limit yourself.

when i was back in high school (15 years ago), the IB programme was offered, but very few students
would do the full diploma the trend has changed now, most international schools students
will be taking the full IB diploma as a norm, which means a mix of SL and HL levels.

universities will recognize most HL courses scoring 7 as college credit. some colleges will take a 6.
(for IB HL Business it really depends on the university) you don't get college credit for SL classes,
even if you take both SL1 (11th grade) SL2 (12th grade). you'll need to do HL1 and and HL2.

i didn't do the full diploma, but i took several HL courses and was able to get college credit on
whatever i got 7s on. and like ygolo said, sooooo glad didn't have to take the giant lecture classes
for the math & science req classes freshman year.
 

CzeCze

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AP is for mortals.

IB is for demigods.

j/k (sorta). You should be fine if you can come to grips with the fact that your social life will take a hit.

Ha. I have heard this as well. i went to a school with jolly AP, no honors, no IB, even though we were an int'l school.

I think what people say is true - it depends on the teacher and also your natural aptitude for the material. If you get the material it doesn't matter how you do in the class you can still ace the AP exam ( which happened in my AP us history the teacher gave me a C or D but I got a 4 on test and was only 1 of 2 out of 60+ to even pass the exam IN YO FACE!)

If you just want the AP exam credit and don't even need the class, y can sign up for the test on your own.

The only area you can get screwed is in something that is difficult to teach yourself, like language (or not, some people can teach themselves foreign languages just fine). In the subjects you find more challenging you will need better teachers and better classes.

From what I remember of my AP classes unless y go to an acacdmicaolh intensive/advanced school, AP classes themselves aren't necessarily "harder than normal". If you feel confident in the subject it will be like regular highschool. I took 8 AP classes in highschool spead outnover 3 years (which is the unofficial ceiling wt my hs, 3a year was the recommended max they would let you do)and they were negligible from my non AP classes. Amy strengths were literature and social sciences and my challenges were math and science, so the AP science classes were just as difficult for me as regular classes and the AP lit/social science classes were just as not difficult.

Btw if you want to talk about hard the difficulty level jumps noticeably in college - unless again yo go to an academically intensive school (if youre in the US system this probevly does not include you :p)I got college credit for French from my AP test but it was WAY more advanced in my college high ingermediste French class then in AP French.

Anywho, I think you're confident you can carry that academic load. So do it and just drop classes accordingly once school starts. That's what study hall is for.
 

CzeCze

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On second thought if your guidance counselor approves that, it can't be that daunting. Either the classes arent significantly harder than non AP and your school administrators know it, your counselor believes in your abilities and thinks you can certainly do it, or a combination of both.

My cousin ENTP told me he took a similar load like that his senior year (public) with at least 5 -6 AP classes and I was lie what? In my highschool (private) the cap on max AP classes was really low. Is it really common to be able to take as many AP classes as you want?
 

mujigay

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From what I remember from high school.

AP courses were usually easier than Honors courses. :D

Like I said before, this kind of thing really does vary by school.

At my school, like OP's school, AP classes are a significant level up from honors classes, mostly because of the teachers in charge of them.

In the end, that's the unfair thing about the GPA and rank thing in the college application system. The kind of classes that you can sleep through at one school, you're gonna fail at another. The GPA that will make you valedictorian at one school barely puts you in the top quarter at another school, and all of this within the same district's public schooling system. C'est la vie.
 

highlander

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I think there might be a few things to consider with the AP classes. My first reaction is that they are hard - like college classes to an extent and you do have to work pretty hard at them normally. I don't know if it's a good idea to take more than 2 simultaneously. An easy AP class isn't likely to prepare you well for the AP exam so I'd probably focus energies on the better ones. The other thing to consider is your GPA and what the weighted average is for an AP class vs. honors class vs advanced, etc. If you are wanting to be valedictorian or salutatorian, then you want to maximize the number of classes that have the highest weighting and keep the ones with the lowest weighting to the absolute utter minimun while getting straight As. So, if you get more credit for taking an AP class than an honors class then you want to maximize the number of those classes even if they are easy.

When it comes down to college, what I've seen is even with a huge number of AP credits, you usually end of up having to go the full four years (or five depending on program) anyway because to fulfill the requirements of your major and minor (or double major), there are certain classes you need to take to fulfill those requirements. Still, I think in general good AP classes are an excellent way to get you better prepared for college regardless as to how much value those credits provide once you get there.
 

ygolo

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When it comes down to college, what I've seen is even with a huge number of AP credits, you usually end of up having to go the full four years (or five depending on program) anyway because to fulfill the requirements of your major and minor (or double major), there are certain classes you need to take to fulfill those requirements.

Well, this wasn't my experience. People who got a lot of AP/Transfer credits have a major advantage.

I started off college in Sophomore standing, and had a friend who started off in Junior standing.

I took a total year-off to do co-ops with a company, but still graduated with my incoming class (4-years) with two separate bachelors degrees (one engineering degree and one math degree). My friend, in those same 4 years, finished two bachelors degrees, and two masters degrees.

I knew many others who decided to take the easy route, and used the fact that they had many APs to take the absolute minimum course load and graduate at a leisurely pace along side everyone else.
 

highlander

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I started off college in Sophomore standing, and had a friend who started off in Junior standing.

Yep. How about a sophomore starting her first semester with 93 credit hours already :).

Maybe it depends on the major.
 

CzeCze

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[MENTION=825]ygolo[/MENTION] you sound super motivated. I think only a fraction of trad aged college students will be 1/2 as self-driven and organized as you were at that age. I barely even wanted to go to college.

For the OP a good question though - whats the ultimate goal for the class load?

Let us know what your counselor says. :p
 

FireShield98

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I took AP US History this year. It stars off pretty hard, but it gets easier as you go along, because you get more used to what you have to do. It is MUCH more of memorizing random, insignificant facts than it is understanding broader concepts, which is why I found it hard. One thing to keep in mind is that the AP test is WAY easier than the class (at least in my case it was).

I also had honors precalculus this year and I thought it was very easy. If you're good at algebra and geometry, then you'll find it easy.

I'm taking five AP classes next year (physics, chemistry, calculus, psychology, and US government) in addition to the academic level English (senior English for half the year and an English elective the other half), but I'm going to teach myself some other AP courses this summer and next school year (statistics, biology, language, literature, Spanish, and maybe a few others) and take those AP tests to get even more AP credit.

All I can say for advice: be prepared to do a LOT of work.
 

Rail Tracer

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NOT.TRUE.

Like I said before, this kind of thing really does vary by school.

At my school, like OP's school, AP classes are a significant level up from honors classes, mostly because of the teachers in charge of them.

In the end, that's the unfair thing about the GPA and rank thing in the college application system. The kind of classes that you can sleep through at one school, you're gonna fail at another. The GPA that will make you valedictorian at one school barely puts you in the top quarter at another school, and all of this within the same district's public schooling system. C'est la vie.

Yeah, what happen at my high school was that the Honors teachers were REALLY hard on you while the AP courses were more or less like "regular" college courses.
 
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