No APs sophomore year?

r2v2018
Tue, 07 Nov 2017 22:30:56 +0000

From what I’ve seen, most people take the majority of their AP classes junior and senior years. The most common Freshman and Sophomore APs seem to be Human Geo, Psychology, World History, and Physics 1, and although these are definitely all attractive to admissions officers, I don’t think any of these are as important to admissions officers as APUSH, AP English Language/Literature, or AP Calculus, and these are generally taken junior/senior years.

Even taking all of this into consideration, I would really try to add a lot of rigor junior year to prove that you are capable of handling advanced classes (AP English/History/Science + honors math + upper-level foreign language is a good schedule skeleton I’ve seen), because you are slightly behind other students. I’ve never met a sophomore who has taken five APs at once, but most competitive applicants I have met have taken at least two or three by the time they reach sophomore year, those APs being the very first four I listed in the last paragraph. Just don’t go overboard, though, because doing poorly with a challenging schedule may validate the idea that you were not able to handle challenging coursework in ninth and tenth grades. Due to a bunch of issues with scheduling and guidance, I had very few Honors classes and not a single AP class during my first two years of high school; last year, I went insane and I took 3 APs + 2 Dual Enrollment at my HS + 3 Honors + 2 MORE dual enrollment over the summer and I survived with all As and 1 B, but I believe this was far more stressful than necessary. My senior schedule is actually a bit worse (5 APs + 3 Dual Enrollment each semester + Spanish IV Honors), but half of my classes are online, so I actually feel less overwhelmed than I did last year.