Hi, I’m junior and plan to finish high school with a total of 7 AP classes. However, because my GPA is not super impressive and I want to apply to well recognised universities like Harvard, Barnard College, NYU, etc, I want to make sure I do everything I can to make myself stand out so my GPA is “excused”. Hence my question: is 7 APs impressive, or should I challenge myself a lot more on my senior year? If I do I would graduate with 9 to 11 APs.
List of APs I have taken and plan to take:
AP Spanish Language
AP World History
AP English Language
AP Psych
AP English Lit
Ap Spanish Lit
AP French
List of APs I would take to make my resume more impressive:
AP Macro
AP Micro
AP Calc (if I get the signature)
AP Environmental / AP Physics
I am hesitant to take these classes because if I don’t then it would make things so much easier and I would be able to pull up my GPA to a 3.7 unweighted (4.0 weighted). Is it worth it?
You can take every single AP class in existence and still get rejected from every single ‘top’ school because of a low gpa. Know your limits and try to have an upward trend in your grades. Find something else to do in your free time rather than studying for AP classes you have little interest in.
Since you’re fluent in multiple languages (I assuume), try to start a language club at your school. Maybe do study abroad this Summer.
Well, I mean, obviously if you took 12 APs and did very well in all of them (class and test), that’d be very impressive. It certainly would give a boost to your application.
But is it realistic for one to do, particularly in tandem with extracurriculars, community service, family, friends, and sleep? I don’t think so. Something has to give in order for this to work out, whether it be your GPA, health, and so on. That’s where colleges stop caring about the little show you’ve put on for them. At that point, all it looks like is that you tried way too hard and you can’t take the heat. It shows you recklessly piled courses on in a valiant attempt to look impressive. And that’s not what any school wants.
Take the AP classes you enjoy. Do well in them. Go and do some interesting stuff, because I guarantee that a more interesting essay or a couple of clubs will make your application better than taking AP Econ and Calc and doing badly in them.
My sentiment about AP classes has always been to take them if I am genuinely interested in the topic or if I want to see if it would change my sentiment towards the topic. Why waste 1 hour every day just to attempt to wow someone? Colleges can see through that type of scheme, and your education is more important.
It is better to do extremely well in a few APs than be average in many. Focus on what you are interested in, show a drive in a particular subject/field. Don’t jeopardize community involvement for a heavy course load either. Good luck in your endeavors!
Unless you’re in a high school where many students pile on the APs, you don’t need to take that many. My son’s HS is one such competitive school; at least the top 10-15 percent of the class (~750 students total in the junior class) consists of students taking 5 or 6 AP classes this year alone. My S will likely graduate with 14 APs and two dual credit courses and his class will probably have 150 or more students who graduate with 10+ APs; his AP count will be impressive but not out of the ordinary for top students at his school. So from his school, top colleges like Harvard wouldn’t take a second look at students with “only” seven APs. All the advice you received above is good, but it is important to know what the top students in YOUR school are doing because you will be compared to the profile of your school. If the top 5-10 percent of your class will have 10+ APs and close to a 4.0 unweighted GPA, you will have a hard time convincing Harvard that you’re a viable candidate. Conversely if the top students graduate with five APs, then you are much better off sticking with your planned seven APs and maximizing your GPA. Of course, loading up on APs and seeing your unweighted GPA drop won’t help you no matter how your AP count compares to your school’s top ten percent.
^ Actually, Harvard wouldn’t differentiate between a kid with 7 or 10 AP 's by number alone. They’d look at which AP 's, do they show the student can handle our level of academic rigor , and then move on to essays and ec 's.
Stick to your plan. If you feel you can handle it, add AP macro /micro.
But it’s better to have a 3.7 with 7 AP 's, than a 3.5 with 9-10…
@MYOS1634, as I said, from MY SON’S SCHOOL, Harvard would not and has never taken a student with only seven APs. A few kids do get accepted to Harvard every year but they’re all top-of-the class range (top 2-3%) and NOT ONE of those students has fewer than 10 APs. With the way the school weights (level 4.0, honors/preAP 5.0, AP/dual credit 6.0) and ranks on weighted GPA, the top students are driven toward maximizing APs. Few classes are offered as dual credit, so graduating with 12-15 APs is standard for the top 5% of the class. I’m fully aware of what HYPMS say about APs but I know for a fact that kids from schools like my son’s are not getting into HYPMS without 10+ APs. Thus my point that it’s important to know what the top students in the OP’s school are doing, unless by some odd chance the OP is the only Harvard applicant from the school that year.
ETA: the reason I know Harvard has never taken a seven AP student from the school is that it is relatively new and Naviance data is available for its lifetime
At our public Texas high school, if one does not take a full weighted schedule all 4 years and do PE in the summer they will not be in the top ranking.
Our school districts weights preAP, AP and Dual Credit all the same.
@traveler98: it could be for many reasons, not just the number of AP’s. What about similar-level schools, ie., Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Amherst, Pomona - no admission for students with 7 Ap’s? (I’m genuinely curious, because it’s not what my experience tells me.)
Texas is peculiar because rank is so important, and so many therefore engage in ‘gaming the rankings’.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that the kids in this school who take 10+ AP also have near perfect SAT scores and the most impressive APs. You would have to get more info.
^ that would make sense. In my experience, numerous of AP 's isn’t predictive at all. A student with fewer AP’s and a national title is considered preferable to a student with 10 AP 's. Obviously being recognized for something and having 10 AP 's wouldn’t be detrimental, but in my experience number of AP 's alone doesn’t make the difference.