Selecting Senior Year ClassesAnswered
Hello! I have a few more days left of registration and I've had a sudden change of heart as to what classes to take. I go to a school for upperclassmen that has a special curriculum focused around environmental science and allows you to take classes at your normal high school.
The classes that are relevant to my narrative are as follows: freshman year, 4 core classes all honors. Sophomore year, honors Lit, honors Alg 2, honors chem and AP US History. Junior year, AP Lang, honors Pre Calc, AP stats, honors physics, AP Bio, AP World. My extracurriculars have robotics and public speaking spikes. Should have a 3.95-3.92 GPA by the end of Junior year. 33 ACT, taking it again with my school in April.
I want to major in chemical engineering at CalTech or Northwestern in my dreams, Rensselaer, U of Rochester, RIT or SIT more realistically or U of MN as my hometown fallback.
My original plan was AP Lit, AP Calc (only AB is offered at my school but I might self study the BC content), AP Envir Sci (very integrated into the curric at my school, kind of a no-brainer), AP Geo and AP Chem. AP Chem requires that I drive to a different school during the day. This would give me a total of 10 AP classes.
At heart though, I dread having to drive to the school I don't like to take a second year of chemistry, as interested as I am in the subject; the faculty at this school has not been the best to me. I would much rather take a double period of forensics taught by my excellent physics teacher.
Would only having 9 AP classes really affect me that much? Would colleges be impressed by a career development forensics class more than AP chem? Honors chem is the only class I have gotten a B in mostly because of online school, is taking AP chem and getting A's going to help with my intended major? Is self-studying the BC content of Calc something I should do?
TL;DR: AP chem or Forensics?
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1 answer
If you think you can honestly self-study for Calc BC, then do it, and worst-case scenario you don't send that score to colleges. I think going to AP Chem and showing that you do have a good understanding of it (more than a B), might be good. But, I also understand going to school and just dreading what you're doing, so I would personally end up taking the double forensics class. Again, you do want to apply to competitive colleges, so it might beneficial to take AP Chem, but if you think it's possible for you to take the AP test and self-study, then I'd say do that and then do the forensics class. In the end, it is your decision and I hope in the end it all works out.
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