Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HI. The counselor at our "W" school emphasized only taking AP Courses in areas in which you excelled...for my daughter that wound up to be the liberal arts. She has taken honors courses in sciences and math, but not AP. Next year she will take, AP Environmental. She will finish up with 7 total AP Courses. She has already received a score of "5" on her AP NSL test ,and is studying for Lang and lit and World now...hopefully 4s or 5s.

She often tells me that she sees her classmates taking 4 and 5 AP's during the junior year and how very stressed out they all are. it sounds awful and unhealthy to us, so as her parents, we never advocated this much stress for her. She doesn't like it and collapses under that sort of stress.

We recently met with an independent college consultant who told us she had not taken enough "rigorous courses" to apply to top tier schools. (not Ivy Leagues) Of course, DD came away upset and felt a bit led astray by the school guidance counselor, who really didn't recommend 4 to 5 AP's a year.

DD has hopes of being accepted to public ivys, but I don't even know if this is possible given her 1400 SAT and 'only' 7 AP courses.

Talk to me! Tell me your experience with number of AP courses! I know it is all a crap shoot these days.

Thank you.

Yes, taking 5+ APs is a bit crazy IMO. Your kid can get into T30-T50 schools with those scores, it is possible. But you need to consider them reaches and have good targets and safeties as well.

My own DC took 4Aps junior year and 4 APs senior year. All STEM except AP Psych. I suspect taking AP ENG/APUSH/APEuro might have strengthened her resume for T20 schools, but not by much (she had SAT of 1500 and 3.95 UW gpa and engineering major). I'm with you, that more than 4 APs puts too much pressure on most kids and doesn't allow them time to do other stuff. For some kids, more than 2 is too many and that's ok. These are college level work and the kids are in HS!
My DC dances 15-20 hours/week. So APUSH or APEng was going to add another 20+ hours EACH week of work to complete. Yes, my DC could do it, but would it be worth it? She would have never slept: 7 hours at school plus 2-5 hours of dance each night, and then add in HW, there just wouldn't have been time to sleep.
We chose to have her focus on the STEM courses that interested her. Ultimately she's glad she didn't take the AP Eng/APUSH/APEuro, etc. Why? Because both of her top choices do not allow students to use AP credits for "core Curriculum" Only reason she would have done it was to eliminate courses like that for college---so happy she didn't just take them for rigor and make herself miserable.

What you have to realize is that with a 1400 SAT, your chances of a T20 is extremely low. Heck it's extremely low even with a 1600 and 4.8W gpa. So part of the plan needs to be finding great colleges that your kid can get into while "being yourself".

If she felt 4-5 APs Junior year would create the kind of stress that she would collapse under, than her choices were correct for her. Now, she adjusts her expectations and starts looking for great colleges that love a kid with 7 APs/1400 SAT. She will have plenty of choices if she builds an appropriate list.

My kids both have ADHD and because of that we limited APs to 3 in junior year. In retrospect, DS really found his footing and probably would have done OK with more. DD, however, is still struggling with her EF skills and had some medical issues on top of that and junior year has been really hard even with "just" 3. We're in VA and both knew in making that choice that they were ruling out being in contention for UVA but understood they would still have lots of good options.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Independent college counselor is right. To apply to high tier schools you will need higher SAT and need to have taken most rigorous classes. 7 AP classes total not nearly enough.

“Not nearly “ is too strong. Many schools limit students to 3-4 APs at a time without special permission.

Anonymous wrote:My two kids are at UVA and took 8 (plus two DE and 9 APs. Their school did not allow an AP in 9th and only one option in 10th so it was heavily towards 11th and 12th that they took more.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HI. The counselor at our "W" school emphasized only taking AP Courses in areas in which you excelled...for my daughter that wound up to be the liberal arts. She has taken honors courses in sciences and math, but not AP. Next year she will take, AP Environmental. She will finish up with 7 total AP Courses. She has already received a score of "5" on her AP NSL test ,and is studying for Lang and lit and World now...hopefully 4s or 5s.

She often tells me that she sees her classmates taking 4 and 5 AP's during the junior year and how very stressed out they all are. it sounds awful and unhealthy to us, so as her parents, we never advocated this much stress for her. She doesn't like it and collapses under that sort of stress.

We recently met with an independent college consultant who told us she had not taken enough "rigorous courses" to apply to top tier schools. (not Ivy Leagues) Of course, DD came away upset and felt a bit led astray by the school guidance counselor, who really didn't recommend 4 to 5 AP's a year.

DD has hopes of being accepted to public ivys, but I don't even know if this is possible given her 1400 SAT and 'only' 7 AP courses.

Talk to me! Tell me your experience with number of AP courses! I know it is all a crap shoot these days.

Thank you.

Yes, taking 5+ APs is a bit crazy IMO. Your kid can get into T30-T50 schools with those scores, it is possible. But you need to consider them reaches and have good targets and safeties as well.

My own DC took 4Aps junior year and 4 APs senior year. All STEM except AP Psych. I suspect taking AP ENG/APUSH/APEuro might have strengthened her resume for T20 schools, but not by much (she had SAT of 1500 and 3.95 UW gpa and engineering major). I'm with you, that more than 4 APs puts too much pressure on most kids and doesn't allow them time to do other stuff. For some kids, more than 2 is too many and that's ok. These are college level work and the kids are in HS!
My DC dances 15-20 hours/week. So APUSH or APEng was going to add another 20+ hours EACH week of work to complete. Yes, my DC could do it, but would it be worth it? She would have never slept: 7 hours at school plus 2-5 hours of dance each night, and then add in HW, there just wouldn't have been time to sleep.
We chose to have her focus on the STEM courses that interested her. Ultimately she's glad she didn't take the AP Eng/APUSH/APEuro, etc. Why? Because both of her top choices do not allow students to use AP credits for "core Curriculum" Only reason she would have done it was to eliminate courses like that for college---so happy she didn't just take them for rigor and make herself miserable.

What you have to realize is that with a 1400 SAT, your chances of a T20 is extremely low. Heck it's extremely low even with a 1600 and 4.8W gpa. So part of the plan needs to be finding great colleges that your kid can get into while "being yourself".

Anonymous wrote:What's a "public Ivy?"

Anonymous wrote:HI. The counselor at our "W" school emphasized only taking AP Courses in areas in which you excelled...for my daughter that wound up to be the liberal arts. She has taken honors courses in sciences and math, but not AP. Next year she will take, AP Environmental. She will finish up with 7 total AP Courses. She has already received a score of "5" on her AP NSL test ,and is studying for Lang and lit and World now...hopefully 4s or 5s.

She often tells me that she sees her classmates taking 4 and 5 AP's during the junior year and how very stressed out they all are. it sounds awful and unhealthy to us, so as her parents, we never advocated this much stress for her. She doesn't like it and collapses under that sort of stress.

We recently met with an independent college consultant who told us she had not taken enough "rigorous courses" to apply to top tier schools. (not Ivy Leagues) Of course, DD came away upset and felt a bit led astray by the school guidance counselor, who really didn't recommend 4 to 5 AP's a year.

DD has hopes of being accepted to public ivys, but I don't even know if this is possible given her 1400 SAT and 'only' 7 AP courses.

Talk to me! Tell me your experience with number of AP courses! I know it is all a crap shoot these days.

Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:Independent college counselor is right. To apply to high tier schools you will need higher SAT and need to have taken most rigorous classes. 7 AP classes total not nearly enough.