3 AP courses in sophomore year too much?

[Anonymous]

There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

AP world is tough, the rest are easy APs. Some honor classes are tougher and more useful than aphug and apcsp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

AP world is tough, the rest are easy APs. Some honor classes are tougher and more useful than aphug and apcsp

I haven’t heard that AP stats is easy. Quite the opposite. Why this class in 10th grade? What would he take for math in his junior and senior year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

Focus on rigorous courses in core academic areas instead of taking a bunch of useless APs. AP world and AP stats are good though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

AP world is tough, the rest are easy APs. Some honor classes are tougher and more useful than aphug and apcsp

+1. AP World is a killer. But appropriate for 10th and the first AP many FCPS kids take—in 10th. Mine had Human Geo in 11th and it was an easy 5. Although there are relatively few 5th statistically because lots of kids take it in 9th or 10th. CSP is supposed to be super easy.

AP Stats is actually not easy at my kids school. Most kids who take it have Pre-Calc and are senior who don’t want Calculus, or who have Calculus and need a senior math class.

Even if your kid takes summer PE, 5 core (includes AP World), you only have 2 spots left. I’d do AP a CS and/or Human Geo, but let your kid have a say. 2 is fine.

Your sophomore should not take AP Stats instead of Pre-Calc. Then what junior year when he has a year long gap to lose knowledge and needs Pre-Calc to progress?

What is he interested in?

[Anonymous]

That is way too many APs, unless he is profoundly gifted. Let him be a high school kid. He does not need to take all these college classes. He needs a balance of free time in life, so he can be in a few clubs, engage in a hobby, or just lie on his bed and listen to music and daydream. Kids are getting pushed too much.

Imagine if you went to work and every day they gave you a really difficult load of work or tons of projects. You’d be mentally burnt out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 4 APs DS can take in sophomore year in his school. He took all honors (except Band and Information systems) in Freshman and is at a decent A overall.
He is considering to do 3 of the 4 below, is that too much? Did any of your children do this? Or did anyone do 4 even in sophomore year? Any idea on the rigor/ease of these four? What 3 would you recommend?

AP World History
AP CSP
AP Human Geography
AP Stats (since he is Algebra 2 this year)

Focus on rigorous courses in core academic areas instead of taking a bunch of useless APs. AP world and AP stats are good though.

+1 Core and interests
DS took principles in 9th

[Anonymous]

OP Here
Thank you all for the input!

He is looking go towards pre-med track, and cant do AP Bio till 11th because he needs Bio and Chem as prerequisites.

He will be doing Chem Honors, Eng 10 Honors, Pre-Calc Honors, Spanish 3 (PE over summer)
So he has 3 spots left, hence the thought of doing 3 APs this year.

What do you recommend for someone going in that direction?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP Here
Thank you all for the input!

He is looking go towards pre-med track, and cant do AP Bio till 11th because he needs Bio and Chem as prerequisites.

He will be doing Chem Honors, Eng 10 Honors, Pre-Calc Honors, Spanish 3 (PE over summer)
So he has 3 spots left, hence the thought of doing 3 APs this year.

What do you recommend for someone going in that direction?

H. precalc and AP Stats are a lot to do at the same time. I’ve had students at my school do it and be successful but only a few. I always advise against it and recommend taking H. Precalc and taking AP Stats later. That’s a very rigorous schedule and I know that’s what you are looking for, but only you and your son know if it’s appropriate for him.

[Anonymous]

What about AP Psych, AP World, and Sports Medicine for his 3 spots?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP Here
Thank you all for the input!

He is looking go towards pre-med track, and cant do AP Bio till 11th because he needs Bio and Chem as prerequisites.

He will be doing Chem Honors, Eng 10 Honors, Pre-Calc Honors, Spanish 3 (PE over summer)
So he has 3 spots left, hence the thought of doing 3 APs this year.

What do you recommend for someone going in that direction?

If you add AP world it will be a rigorous schedule. Alternatively, you can do AP stats and World History honours. It will be tough to do all three, precalc, ap world and ap stats and not really necessary. The other two APs, geo and csp, don’t add to rigour but if he likes the subjects just take them for fun. Or take something else he likes, doesn’t matter. Your schedule is rigorous enough with AP world or AP stats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about AP Psych, AP World, and Sports Medicine for his 3 spots?

AP Psych is not easy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about AP Psych, AP World, and Sports Medicine for his 3 spots?

AP Psych is not easy

So? But it does seem a bit applicable to a pre-med student.

[Anonymous]

My DS is currently a sophomore and is taking AP world, precalc h, and AP stats. He took AP stats as an elective because he truly loves math. He finds Ap world very challenging. On the flip side…he does not find precalc h that hard (he currently has over a 100 average) and does not find AP stats to be too hard (currently has a 97 average). The rest of his core classes are honors. Whether or not these courses are too hard depends upon your child…mine excels at math but has to really work hard at English and history to do well. It really depends upon what your child is strong in as to whether these classes will be too hard.

[Anonymous]

Is this FCPS? Don't they limit the number of APs in 10th grade?