<p>I think it’s more important to get high school courses out of the way in high school before taking college level courses (especially if the college-level, AP courses are in the humanities and you want to be an engineer).</p>
<p>You don’t have to take AP Physics - you can take high school, algebra-based physics instead - but physics is a core course for an engineer. At my high school, algebra-based physics was a prerequisite for AP Physics - your school appears to be different. Your high school physics performance is more likely to get you into Lehigh or into Princeton’s engineering department than would your performance on AP Psychology. </p>
<p>Yes, KamelAkbar made it through calculus-based physics without taking any physics in high school (and you have no idea who he is or how brilliant he is - he could have an IQ of 189). My college roommate, a chemical engineer, also took college, calculus-based physics his freshman year without having taken high school physics, but it was brutal, and he was one of those people who functioned completely normally on four hours of sleep (they’re called light sleepers by sleep researchers, and only a tiny percentage of humans are in that category). He was the only engineer I ever met who hadn’t taken physics before college.</p>
<p>Probably the biggest engineer-killer (or engineering weeder course) is freshman, calculus-based physics. I can remember all of the engineers moaning about it, and virtually all had taken and excelled at high school physics already. Be as well-prepared for that course as you can.</p>