Electives for sophomore year?

Hello!

I'm actually currently a sophomore with almost an identical course load as the one you listed. Personally, I would put continuing with Spanish 4 a priority. I am not sure what colleges you want to get into, but most top-tier universities want 4 years of a foreign language. I highly recommend not skipping a year of the language. You will most likely forget a lot of what you learned and fall behind other students when you do pick up Spanish 4 again, causing a GPA drop that could be avoided.

Are you able to replace research chemistry with AP Biology since they are both science courses? Or is research chemistry a hard requirement for sophomores? If you are able to, I would try to take AP Biology instead of research chemistry (if you think you can handle the course load, AP Bio is a difficult class).

Unless you would be willing to drop orchestra, I would take Spanish 4 instead of AP Biology and just double down on AP classes next year. Generally, highly selective colleges like to see anywhere from 7-12 AP classes, so maybe take 1 sophomore year, 3 junior year, and 4 senior year (try to fit a lesser workload one in senior year such as AP Comp Sci Principles, AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, etc.)?

--> even though taking more AP classes sophomore year would be great, heavily increasing AP classes in your next years would show that you really challenged yourself academically.

In fact, since you are already in math analysis, I would spend your sophomore year studying for the SAT or ACT and take it for the first time during early summer before your junior year so you can take hard courses junior year and not have to worry too much about test taking! If you are also prepared, you can take the PSAT junior year and possibly qualify for the national merit scholarship.

I hope this helped! Good luck :)