I need to confirm my junior year schedule tomorrow, and I realized I haven’t filled my practical art requirement. I plan on taking the ethics and logic course at my school to fill it, but am not sure which year to take it.
My junior year will be AP English 11, AP Calc AB, AP Chem, AP Physics C Mech, French 3H, Pointe, and modern. I’ll be taking US history over the summer.
My senior year schedule was going to be AP English 12, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C E&M, AP French, AP Gov/Econ, and AP Psych.
However, I am now trying to figure out if it would be better to replace either one of my dance classes junior year (modern) with the ethics course or replace either AP French or AP Psych with it in my senior year. I know the junior year schedule would be stronger with the ethics course, but it would be a heavy workload. I’m unsure which would appear better to competitive colleges, assuming I can maintain fairly good grades in these classes, or if I’m missing a key factor in my decision. Thank you for any input!
If the modern class is not needed for requirement, I would say replace it with the ethics and logic course. If you really like the modern dance class, then replace AP Psych then
AP Chem + Ap Physics C sounds like an overly ambitious combination if not downright insane.
Can you take regular or honors Chem, at least?
Can you replace AP Lit with Honors Literature or senior seminars in English?
Replace AP Psych (AP-Lite) with Ethics and Logic.
Remember that the most selective schools only want about 8 AP’s, tops, total. They frown on the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to Ap’s.
They frown upon it if you don’t do well in them or you decide to not do any EC’s because of rigorous of schedule. Only AP Psych is that extra AP where selective schools will do that extra frowning.
I understand the reasoning for replacing AP Psych, but my worry is then if my junior year schedule is too light since I’m not taking APUSH. Also in total, I’ll only have 10 APs if I drop Psych.
You “only” need 8 for schools like Harvard and Yale, so why worry about having 10?
Stanford puts it succintly: “it’s not a game of who has the most Ap’s, wins”.
Ethics&Logic would actually seem more interesting than AP Psych to most highly selective colleges.
I wouldn’t replace AP French, but dance, ethics, and AP psych are approximately ‘equivalent’ as far as judging course rigor. So mix and match how you’d like. Psych might have ‘AP’ in the name, but it’s relatively easy and adcoms probably know that + it’s not a core subject. FYI senior year grades don’t count for much so that shouldn’t be a big deciding factor for your senior schedule.