Maybe, but you need a foundation. My daughter had AP Chem and still struggled in her (very tippy top) UG school. Still got a C+ in orgo. Luckily got into multiple med schools and graduated #1 of her class. But chem was a huge struggle for her. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot going to UG without good preparation .
Focus on getting into an undergraduate program first.
Why would you want to drop AP Chem? It isn’t brutal.
Please don’t drop
Could you tell me what your daughter got in General Chemistry as well?
I really would love to stay but all 4 of the AP teachers I have as well as the Honors Entrepreneurship and Business Law courses have the most aggressive teachers known to school (it is different from the typical AP style I have seen) so I want to play it safe so that the senior year transcript is preserved… this is not me being lazy since I took 5 AP’s in the previous year (and the school’s scheduling system would not permit me to take above 4-5 due to less teachers).
And for the undergraduate program, since I have excelled in business through my magnet program, courseload, and extracurriculars, I will enroll in a business school while taking PreMed courses in the remaining elective slots.
Kids at my son’s school have much more rigorous schedules (gifted program) and they all do a minimum of 13 APs including Calc BC, AP Chem, and AP Physics, some have 15. You are competing with loads of other kids doing the same thing while also doing sports, and ECs. Nobody knows if dropping will hurt your chances, though your counselor could possibly check the box stating that you did not take the most rigorous courses available.
My guidance counselor says it does not hurt me and as I said before, it will be replaced by another AP and the school’s limited scheduling system doesn’t even allow me to for that many AP’s:
(can’t go above 4 for this year because of my Magnet Porgram Hnrs Business Law Courses occupy spots)
*(meaning I can only Acquire the credit of 9 AP classes for my HS career, and that any AP’s the school cannot provide me are replaced by related rigorous honors courses)
IN ADDITION: AP courses vary in rigor across many schools (some difficult courses are taught like easy classes while others are taught aggressively)… the valedictorian of my class could only manage 4-5 PER YEAR and that’s because my school specifically is known to cover courses aggressively (which is why students in the first decile typically take 3-4 per year and I already took more).
If students at your son’s school are taking 13-15 AP’s while managing sports than chances are that AP courses are not being covered as rigorously in that environment.
Having a gazillion AP’s does not make your schedule rigorous (since AP’s in different schools are taught far less rigorously) and believe me I am sincerely trying my maximum effort. The rigor depends solely on how the teacher and the school delivers the course.
You are trying to rationalize. Either take the course or not, but not taking it because it’s brutal, makes me think you are not med school material. Excuses don’t fly.
Please don’t drop AP Chem. Use YouTube videos and do USNCO problems.
Pretty sure the AP classes that were taken at my daughters school were as you say were aggressive. Many students were getting 5 on their exams while taking 5 to 7 AP courses. Quit making excuses.
Oh honey.
Chem 101 (which you are likely to take whether or not you get a 5 on AP Chem, b/c as @skieurope pointed out, so many med schools don’t accept APs for the core courses), Bio 101, Organic, Physics 101: these classes are often referred to as ‘weed-out’ classes. They are pre-reqs for a lot of other things, including pre-med. As such, in most schools they are large lecture classes. They are also the ones that profs least like teaching, so typically the lowest person on the totem pole gets the gig (in big universities, TAs do a lot of the heavy lifting).
I actually don’t think it is a big deal at all for you to change- had a collegekid do almost exactly the same switch, but for very different reasons, and it worked out fine. Some of the above posts seem to be emphasizing that if you are the kind of student who can handle finance + a full pre-med course load at a university such as UChicago then you should be able to handle your course load as it is.
My older son dropped AP chem senior year for the same reason as you. The teacher was a newbie teacher (right out of a doctoral program) who had something to prove. This was a private school where teachers were not necessarily trained as educators. If homework was a day late, she gave a zero, no make ups allowed for any reason (even for illness). By Oct. my son was in over his head and no matter what scores he received for the rest of the year, I calculated that he had to fail. That is, even with 100% on every future assignment he mathematically could not pass the class. She actually told him something like, “you may be smart, but you have no future in chemistry”.
She was wrong. He just got his BS in chemistry, and is working on his masters in bioinformatics.
The moral here is that if a teacher is extremely incompatible with a student, and it is just a one-off situation (only the one teacher), sometimes it is better to just cut your losses. .
At least for my son, it did not hurt his college applications. Granted, he did not apply to very top programs, and he had strong test scores for where he applied. He also had high rigor for math/science classes across his high school years, even with the dropped chem class. In the end he got into a decent computer science/engineering program, but decided to go to a different (non-engineering) school for financial reasons.
What science courses have you taken in high school?
Except for the illness part, this is not atypical once you’re in college.
Not discounting that this particular teacher may have been ineffective, but as a point of clarification: Ph.D. candidates usually have teaching responsibilities, so while she may have been a “newbie” to that school, or at the HS level, I’m sure she had teaching experience.
I’m not disagreeing. The issue for me is if the OP wants to drop AP Chem for a similarly rigorous course like AP Bio or AP Physics C, then by all means go for it. If the OP wants to pursue a BS in business without med school or is targeting colleges outside the top tier, then drop AP Chem for AP Comp Sci. But if the OP, as indicated, is targeting top schools and has med school aspirations, then dropping AP Chem for AP Comp Sci will not make him/her competitive. And if it’s a struggle to balance it all as a senior in HS, it will not be much easier as a college freshman. Despite the name, AP Comp Sci is not considered a science (in HS preparation terms) and is not considered as challenging as AP Chem.
Ok but the OP is not applying as a STEM, so AP Chem is not that important wrt admissions, the issue is more not having a science, I’d take a college-prep science class instead of AP Comp Sci.
@skierope My point was that the my son was able to get a bachelors in Chemistry despite dropping the AP Chem course. Sometimes teachers are just bad at their job, and there are no options to switch to another section in HS the way one can in college. My son had absolutely no issues with his Freshman Chem courses in college, by the way.
The OP wants to apply to school for business and perhaps he will also be premed. It is my opinion his application will not be hurt by dropping Chemistry, assuming he is not applying to the tippy top schools. This is based on my experience of having worked as faculty at several colleges that would fall under that category (solid rep here at CC, but not top 50). I disagree re: your assertion as to what is perceived as “harder”, AP Chem or AP Computer Science. I can say that in the social science departments where I worked, we would rather see incoming freshman with computer/programming/statistical skills than those adept in Chemistry. I am also someone who firmly believes that AP courses shouldn’t really substitute for college courses – I do not find them to be equivalent.
As to your “point of clarification”, I have a Ph.D., have mentored and supervised doctoral students and am therefore quite familiar with the preparation, and lack thereof, contained in the training for Ph.D. students. From my experience, TAing at a University does not prepare one for teaching in high school. Case in point: what teacher would ever to say to a student “You have no future in _____ field.” I am at a loss as to why you would defend a teacher who would behave in this way.
The OP is much much better off getting a high grade in AP computer science than getting a low grade or even an F in Chemistry. I think it would be a mistake to switch to a class like AP Physics this late in the game. I don’t think Bio is more impressive than comp sci – in my experience Bio is seen as an easy/light science. (I started out college as a Bio major).
@TheSkeptic888 Your assessment of the rigor of my son’s program would be wrong. Consistent scores of 4s and 5s on the AP exams proves otherwise. There are kids who are highly accomplished who can keep up with this workload. You may not be one of them and that is okay.