How many AP classes do I need to be in the top?

I took 3 my junior year and 4 my senior year. My only regret is that I didn’t take more. You don’t necessarily NEED a lot of AP classes to get into a good school, but it helps a good amount if you take hard classes. The vast majority of kids in the upper-echelon schools take as many AP classes as they can fit, and a lot even taking more than their school offers (i.e. taking calc BC instead of just AB by doing the work outside of school). AP bio was definitely the easiest AP class I took and I didn’t have to study or put much work into it to get a 5. AP English (Lang) should be a no-brainer and you should definitely take it as it is no more work than an honors course. You should also take AP US history although it’s a lot of work. Chem/Physics, Calc, English (Lit), and maybe a language if you’re into that in your senior year. It’s good to be ambitious. It won’t kill you socially or extracurricularly. It may be a bit more work but well worth it once you get into college. Get some good SAT scores and get good grades and you should be set for a good school. However, don’t bank on getting in. The Ivys are getting more competitive every year. Apply to at least 1-3 safety schools that you’d actually go to if you didn’t make it into a Stanford (one of the hardest to get into). Cornell’s actually much easier to make. Good luck.

Whether the AP classes you take will stress you out depends on which AP classes you want to take. Even though I took 5 APs and two honors courses my senior year, I still found it easier than the 3 APs and 3 honors courses I took junior year, probably because I had easier senior year.

That said, you will probably be screwed if you are trying to get into Cornell or Stanford with only 4 AP classes (unless that is all your school offers). A lot of kids applying to those schools might be taking 8-10 AP classes. You’ll probably want to take at least two during your junior year. Since you’ll probably be needing to know AP Biology really well if you want to do a medical profession, it might be a better idea to put that one off until senior year (but on the other hand, if you want to do the SAT biology test, maybe you should take AP Bio this year). Meanwhile, maybe you should take a couple of easier AP classes this year.

Also, even if you don’t get into Cornell or Stanford, there are plenty of colleges that are good enough to get you into medical school.

I would take more than one your junior year. One isn’t really anything, and every AP class you take in high school will reduce the time you spend in undergrad. If you want to go into medicine, this will be a huge benefit. Now, my school let me take College English (enrolled through a 2 year university my senior year, so I didn’t have to take AP Lit but still got credit for it. So each semester of English is three hours.That’s 6 hours in lit, I took AP History (3 hours), AP Bio (4 hours), AP Calc (4 hours), AP Statistics (4 hours), AP French (translated into 7 hours because you take a language entrance test), and AP Physics (4 hours). Hmm..I think that was all (My senior year was 02-03). So..that’s 32 hours. To be a sophomore, you have to have 30 hours. So I was a sophomore when I went into college. I graduated in 2006 (took 3 years) and I will have my master’s in 2008. I will be 23 when I have my master’s. So, I think this cuts out a lot of the freshman classes in college, which is nice, and I also changed my major all the time or else I could have graduated earlier. Too bad it ended up being what I went to school for in the first place (microbiology) and I also had a baby along the way. So, if all that is avoidable, you could easily take 2 years off your schooling and save a lot of time and money. Trust me, its worth it in the long run. AP classes are not that hard, and they are pretty much what college classes are like. Good luck with whatever you decide.

First of all, chill out! Enjoy your high school years, they only come once! Now, that aside, the rule of thumb is better safe than sorry. A friend of mine took a max of 2 AP courses her junior and senior year, 1 her sophomore year, with the rest honors. She got into Yale. It’s not about killing yourself, it’s about taking a couple challenging courses while still being able to get straight A’s. The GPA is the most important aspect. The schools aren’t going to care if you took super hard courses if you got Bs in all of them. But again, I killed myself during my high school years, and it was not worth it at all. Chill out, have fun, because it is only downhill from there. I’m in college now and the work never ends. I took 11 AP classes in high school, and the only benefit was that I had a ton of credit when I got to college (but you aren’t rewarded much credit when you go to schools like that–I went to my state school because I received a full ride).

Good waste of your youth.

Sounds like your parents aren’t especially interested in your mental well-being.

Lighten up.

normal kids don’t really do that….