There is probably a reason the counselor said no. I would politely ask why. You are not challenging just seeking understanding. If you still feel this way in two years when you apply to college, you can address your courses in your essay and provide the counselor’s rationale. Better yet, ask him or her to address in a recommendation. I would not worry about it though. Just do your best in the class and learn as much as you can from the teacher. That teacher could become a great connection down the road.
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OP: Map out your schedule for the next 3 years, making sure you can fit into it everything you want. If you can’t fit in everything without doing AP Bio this year, try to schedule a meeting with your GC to address that. Otherwise, do it in your junior or senior year. Then let it go and make sure you do well in all your classes.
Given your interests, you should be doing everything possible to ensure you get top scores on the AP exams you take. Taking lots of AP classes without mastering the material is useless. Remember that the point of all this is to learn, not to get some high score award.
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Based on what I have seen AOs for the most selective colleges say on this topic, as well as actual admissions results, I agree you can relax about not taking as many APs as possible in every single term.
What is not unreasonable is mapping out a four year curriculum plan that fulfills the recommendations of any colleges of interest. Like when it comes to science, doing at least one a year, and all of Physics, Bio, and Chem at least once, and then at least one advanced science, will satisfy the recommendations almost anywhere (a possible exception being like a Caltech).
If you can fill all their different recommendations and still have spare credits, then you can use them as you like, as long as it makes sense for your interests. And no, you don’t have to only be interested in classes related to your intended major. Like very often people have a strong arts interest, but don’t want to major in arts. That’s perfectly fine, and for those kids, it is fine to use a lot of these open slots to do relevant arts classes.
Of course if you love science, maybe you do a lot of extra science instead. Or so on.
But I am very confident most of these colleges do not expect all their successful applicants to make the same choices. Again, their core recommendations may matter, but then beyond that different kids will make different choices, and that is fine with them.
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A few thoughts that I missed in my comment above:
Taking guitar to me looks like a very good choice. There really are a lot of students who are very good at science, or very good at engineering, or very good at math, who are also very good at music. If there is a club that currently does not exist but that would make sense to start, then go for it and that would also be a good idea (but is not necessary to get into a very good university). The club does not need to have anything to do with your final major choice – universities do not expect high school sophomores to already know what they are going to end up doing with their life.
Also, taking two sciences at once is already a LOT of science. I would NOT recommend taking three at once. I would recommend that at some point in high school you take a chemistry class, and a physics class, and a biology class. However, this is at some point throughout your full four years of high school. Taking three science classes at once to me is just too much.
And eventually taking AP bio at some point in high school makes sense, but you still have two more years to do this after this year. There is no need to take it this year.
Hopefully OP comes back and lays out their progress in the core areas - I’m feeling something is being missed in the core classes.
What can you do? You can get the absolute best grades possible in your current classes, enjoy the heck out of guitar, start your club, and live your life. Breathe! Take AP Bio one of the next two years. Holistic admissions means they look at the overall picture, not sheer number of APs in any given year.
My D22 only had 7 AP classes plus multivariable calc (weighted but not AP). She got into Rice and Emory. Her science sequence was honors bio, honors chem, honors physics, AP Bio. She only had three years of social science, but she took four years of chorus.
D26 only had 6 AP classes, only three years of social science and three years of foreign language and still got into Georgia Tech (not a top 20 but definitely a top BME program). She did take four years of symphonic band.
I understand your level of rigor will be looked at within the context of your school, but still – two AP classes sophomore year is fine, and I really don’t think you need to stress about this.
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I doubt they think in terms of being doomed, but there are students, like the OP, who take Calc BC in 11’th and then either Stats or a post-Calculus course senior year.
This is definitely great advice for the OP, but Columbia is not with MIT or Stanford. Depending on the state OP lives, there could be a strong engineering program at the public flagship.
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