OP, as long as your guidance counselor checks “most rigorous,” it does not matter. Your decision will not be helped or harmed by an extra AP class. That’s simply ridiculous.
OP, if your GC will not answer your question about “most rigorous” verbally, then you need to politely ask them how you would pursue this issue with his/her superior (perhaps the principal, superintendent, or school board?), and get it in writing/email. It seems completely ridiculous to me that a HS GC would refuse to offer guidance on your potential academic transcript, especially at an “extremely competitive public”. As long as you ask the question politely, but timely, and remind them that you understand you and the GC are working toward the same shared goal - you will be able to resolve this with them.
Again, Yale might not care at all if you take one additional AP class, but based on what they have said, they are looking for students who take the most rigorous/challenging course level available to them, and do well at them. Because your school offers a lot of AP courses, and is “extremely competitive”, it seems plausible that one more AP potentially could make the difference between “most rigorous” vs. merely “challenging” vs. “bare minimum”, etc. Do you know how many students from your HS typically apply, and of them, how many get accepted to the elite schools? I don’t think Yale usually accepts multiple students from the same public HS the same year - so do you think you are going to stand out among your class? It sounds like you might be on the right track, based on your comment of getting a rare A in APUSH - so big congrats there. Of those former students from your HS that have gotten accepted to elites in the past few years, how many AP’s did they take? If your HS does not allow freshmen and sophomores to take many APs, that will likely be reflected in the applicant pool.
Also, I think you’re better off taking AP physics in high school.
Maybe the GC wants kids to make choices without trying to game “most rigorous.” And I doubt 9 AP would be seen as less, when kids can only fit so any into 3 years.
“Very few people take AP’s sophomore year at my HS…but if they do it is only usually 1 at most. Most of people’s AP’s are taken junior and senior year”
Yale doesn’t hang decisions on the count and whether the GC calls it most rigorous. They don’t say, ooooh, Jonny tool 10 and Mary took 9, forget Mary. Yale will look at the transcript and see the courses. I’d be more concerned OP get in AP calc, all 3 lab sci, incl one as AP, and then other cores as AP, now that he has govt and econ.
AP econ and govt, even for a humanities major, won’t replace other stretch in cores. And then the ECs need pass muster. Grades in all need to be tops. I don’t think OP noted his first sem grades with the current load.
@yaleplzzz - my D’s school did not offer many AP classes and she only took two her high school career - APUSH anAP Statistics. She wanted to be a Classics major (ended up as a Literature major) and she did not take physics her senior year. It did not matter because it was clear from her application that she had no intention of majoring in anything math or science related. I think you’ve gotten a lot of good advice here. A conversation with your GC to ensure that they feel you are taking the most rigorous schedule (since they are the ones who are writing the report that you are not going to see) is crucial to answering your question. I don’t know if you have done that or not, but if you haven’t, I would start there.
@lookingforward My grades for first semester load went as follows (core classes)
APUSH - A
English Honors - A-
Chemistry Honors - A
Algebra 2 Honors - A+
French A - A+
This adds up to a weighted 4.4 GPA on a 5.0 scale
You might want to check with the GC on the school’s grading scale, since I seriously doubt that the grading is on a 5.0 scale.
@skieurope on our scale, an A+ in an AP is a 5.0, an A in an AP is a 4.67, an A- in an AP is a 4.33 and so on. Accordingly, an A+ in an honors is a 4.67, and an A+ in a regular A level class is a 4.33. Is there a way to attach a picture to a post? I have a screenshot of the chart on our school’s website.
@yaleplzzz, that is still referred to as being on a 4.0 scale; it’s just weighted for APs. So, that’s why you might have, for example, a 3.9 UW, but a 4.3 Weighted.
For attaching pictures to a post, it’s an extra credit assignment to find the HTML tags that enable it 
@yaleplzzz: The standard GPA scale for college admissions is a 0.0 to 4.0 unweighted GPA. Usually a high school’s PROFILE*, which your guidance counselor sends to admissions offices along with your application, will include a rubric for decoding the unweighted and weighted scales at your high school. However, if your high school doesn’t provide that information, Admissions offices will often consult a GPA conversion table like this one: https://www.scribd.com/doc/240259653/GPA-Conversion-Table
I’d like to add another perspective to the discussion of whether there’s a practical difference between 9 and 10 APs. I believe that choices such as these demonstrate significant differences among applicants. My kids took a lot of APs, so many that both were our state’s eventual State AP Scholars. Their motivation for taking nearly all APs was simple: 1) those were the classes their friends were in and 2) they were bored in standard classes.
To my point that these choices demonstrate real differences between applicants, consider the dilemma my son faced going into senior year of HS: a scheduling conflict stood in the way of him taking AP Spanish Literature. He only had three years of Spanish in HS up to that point, but those three years included AP Spanish Language. He called his first choice college and was assured that completing one year of AP foreign language fulfilled their language requirements.
Also, as a recruited athlete with an arguably perfect transcript, there was no need to impress admissions any further.
Still, he arranged with the AP Spanish teacher to set up a special private AP Spanish Literature section during their lunch period, and eventually earned a 5 on the AP test.
Granted, that isn’t what you’d expect from most students. But that’s the type of choice that some students make, and those students generally do very well in college admissions.
My suggestion would be that if the GC will not answer your question, ask one of your parents to call the GC and ask the question.