I am an international student from Turkiye, planning to get into an ivy league or into a college that offers full financial aid. I have a “gpa” of 99/100, I have a 4 from AP Biology and a 4 from AP Envrionmental Science(just by self studying). I have strong extracurriculars. I am going to be a physics major, so I have started self studying for AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C Mechanics. I was also planning on taking AP Physics C Electricity and Magnetism, however; I have decided to apply for research programs and figured it would be too much to manage all at the same time.(my school does not offer aps, I study it all by myself along with school homework and school exams, so it’s pretty challenging for me) I still want to have 5 APs on my application but I’m unsure on which one to take if not AP physics c E&M. would my application look weak academically if i didn’t take e&m?
An application to a US university is not weaker by not having AP scores when the school doesn’t offer the courses.
Also, any AP tests taken senior year will not have been taken prior to college application due dates. So the universities will not even see those AP results.
Calculus is IMHO a bad thing to self-study. The biggest issue I see is that calculus is very, very useful for a lot of other classes that you might take in the future. The only students who might be able to get away with self-studying calculus are ones who are very strong at mathematics, and these are specifically the students who are most likely to use calculus many times. Personally I have used calculus in many classes that I took after I took calculus, mostly including physics and math classes, and I have also used calculus on the job multiple times.
I think that you should wait on both calculus and calculus-based physics. You can learn this as a student in university.