One of the most important factors university admissions offices look at when evaluating a candidate is academic rigor. But how challenging is too challenging?
When it comes to academic rigor, Advanced Placement (AP) courses are a measure of whether applicants have challenged themselves enough with their curriculum. So, naturally, the more AP courses you have in your schedule and the more difficult your courses, the better, right? Not necessarily. Here are the factors to consider whether you’re striking the right balance with the number of APs you’re taking.
1) Impact on GPA
You are first and foremost assessed based on your GPA – your ability to perform well in the classes you’ve chosen. So if your AP course load is going to overwhelm your GPA where your grades suffer because the material is too difficult or you’re taking too many APs to be able to properly devote sufficient time to all of them, then it’s not worth it. Between stellar grades with a comparatively easier workload and mediocre grades with tough courses, the first is more compelling for admissions.
However, the caveat here is that you should not be taking the easiest classes. Right after the GPA, colleges look at the difficulty of your classes so a sky high GPA without any Honors or AP courses are a red flag as well. The point is that you want to strike a healthy balance. Don’t take so many APs that you sabotage your GPA. But don’t strip your schedule of challenging courses either.
*Tip re: GPA weighting. Some high schools weight your GPA (aka give you a GPA-boost) if you take Honors or AP classes. While this does provide a buffer so you don’t end up with a low GPA, consider the next few factors as well.
2) Reflection of Academic Interests
Just because you can take all the AP classes your school offers doesn’t mean you should. Which courses you choose to focus your attention on will help college understand what your academic interests are and whether they’re a fit with their programs.
The classes you choose to challenge yourself in should be aligned with your intended major or general course of study that you indicate you have an interest in. Of course, you may not have insight into this as an underclassman, so you can simply gauge whether you like humanities or math and science classes more. Pursue the advanced classes you’re more interested in. This will help you figure out your college major later on and potentially point you toward a career path!
3) Prioritizing Your Time
With a finite number of hours in a day, you can’t devote each waking hour to schoolwork so you should be choosy about which courses you take to not detract from your extracurricular or other involvements. Take it from someone who took 15 APs. It’s not worth the loss of sleep. You can be allocating the time you’re spending on one class to developing other interests or exploring potential career paths.
Having a moderate, balanced course load will help you demonstrate to colleges that you know how to prioritize and manage your time. If you know how to balance your schedule so you’re not overwhelmed with your course load in high school, you’ll have an easier time doing the same in college. Everything in moderation.
4) A Holistic Admissions Review
Your application will be evaluated holistically. This means that your extracurriculars should support your coursework and vice versa. You’ll want your application to be cohesive, so your course picks junior and senior years should be more focused than your freshman and sophomore year courses because you ostensibly have narrowed down your academic interests a bit.
Again, your AP coursework should reflect any extracurricular academic interests (e.g., you should be taking AP science courses if you’re also conducting science research or you should be taking AP English if you’re President of the Literature Club). Make sure there aren’t discrepancies in your application where it would be strange for you to not have an offered AP class on your schedule when it looks like you should.
5) College Credit
If you’re taking a ton of AP classes with the intention to have the courses count in college, there are two very important distinctions to make: Are you trying to graduate early or are you trying to place out of introductory courses? The vast majority of highly selective universities will limit the number of AP credits you’re allowed to count toward graduation since they’re not incentivized to let you graduate early. Remember my 15 APs? Only 2 of them counted toward graduation credits.
If you want the AP credits to place out of university introductory courses, the question is why? The same advice about balancing your courses so you’re not overly challenged goes for college as well. While selective universities are more open to letting you receive credit for an introductory class and place into a higher level, this won’t necessarily get you out of taking the same number of credits to graduate from a major. (You can search individual university policies about AP credits here.)
In the end, there is no “right” number of APs to take. The onus is on you to really understand what you can handle to still achieve at a high standard in each course and to balance your coursework with other non-classroom interests you might have. Don’t forget to just be a kid! With that said, anywhere from 5 to 10 APs is a good range to be in if you’re targeting highly selective schools.
Final note: Unless you’re already achieving at a level in a subject area that your high school course offering and high school teachers cannot handle (meaning you are performing college-level research that you need a specialized professor to mentor you), there’s no reason to take classes at your local college.
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