Does this help my chances for Ivies/other top schools?

Arlmom2
Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:31:09 +0000

You might think about moving AP bio into your junior year. You’re taking regular bio this year. Presumably you’re doing well, or you wouldn’t be planning to take the AP, right? That way you’d have the continuity, and you’d balance out your junior and senior years.

Remember that colleges are going to look most closely at your junior year course load and grades. They’ll also have the AP results from your junior year courses if they want them. At most, they’ll get your first semester senior year grades, and if you’re applying EA or ED they won’t even get those. So junior year really counts!

I also hope you’re not taking AP courses just for the sake of taking AP courses. Here’s an interesting article about UNC-Chapel Hill. Their research indicates that at least at Carolina, they weren’t seeing any improvement in student GPA that was associated with more than five AP courses:
[Study finds that more AP classes may not be better ? University Gazette](http://gazette.unc.edu/2013/01/08/study-finds-that-more-ap-classes-may-not-be-better/)

In the end, I don’t think you’ve made the case for taking another AP course online. You haven’t talked about your extracurriculars, community service, etc. My hunch is that Adodie is right and you’d be better off using the extra time for those. And perhaps you could even get some extra sleep as a result! :-)