Is it realistic to self-study these AP classes as a freshman?

500daysofsunburn
Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:13:53 +0000

New here. I used to lurk for ages as a middle schooler, finally got around to making an account. I understand the people on this site are very upper-echelon in terms of academics, ECs, and just knowledge about stuff in general, so I wanted to get some input from other people.

As a freshman, my school only offers AP statistics, which I decided to push over into my sophomore year, so I could make room for my Latin, orchestra, and technology education class (we’re required to have a credit of tech ed at my school) frosh year. But I know that most people screw around, maybe not necessarily get bad grades, but just waste away a lot of time in general frosh year, and end up really busy their junior and senior years. I don’t want to end up getting 20 minutes of sleep a night later in high school (or now, for that matter). So I think that if I went ahead and self-studied some AP classes during frosh and soph year, but none junior and senior year, that would take a lot of pressure off, so I could concentrate on getting my community service hours in, filling out my app, SAT 1 and 2, getting in EC leadership, etc. my last 2 years of high school. So what I want to know is this:

Would this schedule be too difficult?
frosh year schedule:

Biology GT
US History GT
Precalc GT
English 9 GT
Designing Tech Solutions Honors
Latin 1
String Orchestra GT

In addition to self studying following AP classes:

AP Psychology or AP Human Geo (haven’t decided yet)
AP Micro
AP Macro

Soph year schedule will be:

Chem GT
US Gov AP
Calc AB AP
English 10 GT
Latin 2 Honors
stat AP
Independent Study GT

(I am dropping orchestra, I don’t enjoy it)

I plan on self studying AP classes soph year:

AP Psych or AP Hug (whichever one I don’t do frosh year)
AP Env Sci

Would a schedule that looks like this be too hard? I personally don’t think so, but my counselors disagree. (They don’t know me yet so that’s another thing.) Would it be a good idea to self-study these APs? I’m only self studying the “easy APs” because I’m really looking for the 5. I don’t want to risk a potential 3. I have heard Env Sci can be hard… Does anybody have any advice. I could use anything and everything. I’m still incoming frosh so I’m not looking at colleges or anything yet but I don’t want to pass up opportunities my frosh year and have myself kicking myself in bed senior year.