<p>I think you left off half the advice of experts - the advice is not to just take challenging courses, the advice is to take the most challenging course you can do well in. In an ideal world, you want to see a student just start to struggle, so you want a smattering of B’s with mostly A’s. People hate for me to say it, but in my world, if you get a 4.0, you didn’t challenge yourself - surely there was another course or two you could have added that would cause you get a B+ just from the workload. </p>
<p>Give me a kid with a 3.95 and 9 APs any day over the “slacker” with a 4.0 and 4 APs. And I’ll also take the kid with a 3.95 and no APs, but had to really work for those grades - there’s a lot to be said for anyone who takes themselves to the limit, even if their limit is lower. Maybe they don’t get into Harvard, but as an employee, take the hard worker.</p>