Last year I took:
-Honors Pre AP Chemistry
-French 1
-Honors Spanish 4
-Honors AP World History
-Honors Geometry
-Honors Pre AP English
-Honors Economics and Personal Finance
(Final grades were all As and one B)
This year I signed up for:
-AP Chemistry
-APUSH
-AP English Lang
-AP Physics 1
-AP Computer Science Principles
-Honors Trig
-elective
My school goes by a block schedule and first period is everyday so my chances of having an AP everyday is very high. All I want to know is if this is too much or if it’s doable. I run cross country after school but after that I have the entire afternoon to myself.
Also which classes should I set aside more time for since I’m dividing time equally for all of them right now.
What’s going to be doable or not is really something for us to answer because we don’t know anything about your abilities. Even if some classes are known for being hard or easy, those are only generalizations and you have to rely on yourself to know what you should do. For example, I’m really good at chemistry even though everyone around me says it’s really hard. But when people tried to discourage me from taking it, I followed my gut and took it anyway–and I proved everyone wrong, too.
Anyway, the thing to know about APs is that unless you’re either really skilled in a subject or really interested in it, you should not be taking that AP. So if any of the five APs you have listed don’t fall under one of those two categories, I strongly recommend that you cut them.
Like the first post says, don’t take an AP you don’t have an interest in. Most APs (and many of what you are taking) are considered rigorous APs, so if you are not interested you will probably have a more difficult time. Since you have a block schedule, the chances of you having an AP everyday is close to 100%, unless I am misunderstanding your schedule.
In particular (and depending on your school), Chem, USH & Physics can carry a lot of work with them. You may be well able for the material, but still find the sheer amount of work overwhelming. What year are you going into? Guessing sophomore, maybe junior based on your math level?
…which is often seen as the toughest year of secondary school, where the classes get harder, competitive students are trying to take as rigorous a course load as possible, and the grades really, really count.
Assuming that you are equally strong in science & humanities, the main challenge will be the volume of work: can you handle the amount of reading and the volume of material to be learned. In my experience that is hugely variable not just by school but by teacher- I have seen USH teachers pile on egregious amounts of reading, and know a school where one AP Chem teacher gave massive problem sets and another who gave much less homework (interestingly, the test scores weren’t notably different between the classes).
All of which is a long way of saying: be realistic based on what you know about you, the teachers and your school- and have a backup plan if you find yourself overwhelmed by the work. ID a second choice class that will fit ahead of time, so that you can add/drop if you need to.
I took a very similar schedule to yours my Junior year:
AP Physics 1
AP Physics 2
AP Calculus BC
AP English Language and Composition
AP US History
AP Computer Science A
From this experience, all I have to say is make sure you’re interested in all the classes. If you’re not (I wasn’t interested in US History) the material won’t necessarily be harder for you, but slacking off could become a problem. For me, all my other class work slowly took precedence over doing work for US History and I started to lost track of my work for that class, which quickly got out of hand. Basically, make sure you’re interested or motivated to do well in each class.
Also, I recommend talking to all your teachers about your course load. A few of mine were perfectly happy to push back an assignment by a day or two for me when huge projects were due in other AP classes. Your teachers may be less understanding than mine, but I still recommend at least trying to talk to them.