3 AP courses in sophomore year too much?

[Anonymous]

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

Our HS doesn’t allow sophomores to take AP Psych

[Anonymous]

I have the kid who took Hum Geo. Don’t have a pre-med kid take it. It’s a cool class and DD loved it— but she’s attending college for international relations. World plus Human Geo is awful for a STEM kid. And it’s a particularly impressive AP to have.

My advice is to start at no more than 2, then crank it up junior and senior years. Nothing worse than being in over your head. Some schools make it hard to drop down.

Take AP World. It’s core and the top 1/4 of his class (depending on school) will take it.

Then maybe Econ? Math (quantitative) and humanities. Hard but not too hard. Counts as 2 APs. He’d probably enjoy it more than Human Geo.

Then for goodness sake— let him take something interesting. Standard psych. Anatomy and physiology. One of the non-honors math classes like discrete. Or fine arts, another language. Something he likes.

Leave AP Stats until junior or senior year. It’s not an easy course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I am thinking he is a TJ kid???

I haven't heard of any fcps high schools that let students take much more than AP world their sophomore year, let alon 3 APs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I am thinking he is a TJ kid???

I haven't heard of any fcps high schools that let students take much more than AP world their sophomore year, let alon 3 APs.

AP World isn’t offered at TJ. They do humanities differently.

[Anonymous]

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

Why should they - leave it up to parents and students to decide what level if rigor and work a kid can handle. There are many gifted kids who thrive on intellectual challenge just as there are many athletes who would be happy to do 2+hours of practice a day or thespians who will gladly spend 4 hours each evening in play practice.