Looking at the colleges you are applying to, GW, Fordham, et al, you taking 3 APs should be fine.
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Colleges do not care about progress in rigor of courses, selective collages simply care about how many AP you took and the grade you got. But how many is many? depends on the college and you.
We are in CA, let me use UC as an example. UCs use CAP WGPA, which is 10th and 11th grade GPA capped at 4 AP or Honor class years. In order to get max UC CAP WGPA (around 4.33), you need to get all As with at least 4 AP classes. Most students with max CAP WGPA have a good chance to attend mid tier UCs such as UCD, UCI, UCSB and UCSD. But for top tier UCs such as CAL and UCLA, perfect CAP WGPA is not good enough. Most students there need to have fully WGPA over 4.5. Students aiming top UCs try to take as many AP as possible. Unfortunately, some end up getting more Bs than they should. Once getting more than 8 Bs, the CAP WGPA will be lower than 4.0. Now the students will have to settle for lower tier UCs such as UCSC, UCR or UCM.
Figure out the average stats of the colleges you are targeting and evaluate your own ability, then determine how much risk you want to take. Good Luck.
OP named GW, Macalester, and Fordham.