<p>It depends on your school, AP classes vary significantly from school to school. Some schools will let anyone take several APs. In my high school, we had a well defined honors track that led to APs and this was only available to a small percentage of students, most of whom had been on this track since freshman year. We started taking AP classes Junior year because the honors classes in freshman and sophomore year were the prerequisites that led into the AP classes. Even in Junior year most people who took APs only took one or two (English and U.S. history was the standard combination), only a few people took three or four. As for myself I took Calc BC, U.S. History, and English Language Junior year, then Physics C, Chemistry, English Lit, Spanish, and European History, in my senior year. I received 5s on all of the tests except for Spanish on which I received a 4. So to answer your question about college, at the time I applied, I had not taken as many APs per se as other applicants at other schools, but I had taken the most challenging course load (without overloading) at my school. I was accepted to my first choice (where I now attend), Penn, early as well as Michigan.</p>
<p>Not to disappoint you, but if your teachers teach to the test (which a lot of teachers do), AP classes are not that special or fulfilling. For this reason, I would take the normal number of academic classes that people usually take at your school and choose the APs that interest you. Don’t try to fit in another class just because it’s an AP. I know a lot of kids at my school would try to do summer school and take more courses so they could fit in three AP sciences by the time they graduated. However, you will learn quickly in college that unless you had an exceptional teacher in high school, the corresponding subject areas require much higher level of thinking.</p>