<p>I think that Academic Decathlon, along with AP Euro, makes him stand out MORE than taking AP Psychology or AP Government.
You should be aware the AP Euro is typically much more time consuming than AP Psychology or Government. There is more reading. However, it dovetails with the Academic Decathlon team and will prepare him for studying the humanities in college much more than these other courses.
I would absolutely encourage my student to forego one or two of these other AP courses, even Statistics which is not at all challenging for a kid who was able to take Calc as an 11th grader and is NOT the equivalent of a college stats course at all, to take the combination of Academic Decathlon and AP Euro. This will do a lot more for the intellectual development of your son than these other AP courses.
If he wants to forego stats, he could just do an MIT courseware in math over the summer and put that somewhere in his application. He will learn more.
To see what I mean, take a look at Columbia University’s reading list for their “core curriculum” and compare it to the reading list for the AP Euro class. If your AP Euro class is being taught as it should be, most of these readings will be the same.</p>