I mean, most of the students who went to those schools from my HS, even 1 of the 2 who go to MIT, take the AB Calc program or did what I’m doing and did the BC equivalent at CC and took the test senior year, just because the kids who do the school program don’t have time for other things or are just math-loving kids who don’t want to do ECs- we are not very competitive. Of the 10 kids who did BC in-school last year, 5 went to UCSC, UCD, or UCSB, and the other 5 went to UCLA, RIT, ASU, and Manoa. The two students who went to Pomona and Stanford did AP AB Calc.
But I also get that my list is pretty full of reaches- I will try to add more targets and safeties. I just thought that as someone who does not want to do anything STEM-related, it would be unnecessary to take all the hardest STEM courses. We’re only allowed 3 APs and no double sciences, so it’s impossible to do all of AP ES/AP Bio/AP Chem/AP Physics, and my course rigor will be marked equally difficult if I take all of the most difficult humanities courses and take the highest-level math course outside of school, and I thought additional Econ courses will help as that’s the kind of math involved in IR.