Which A.P. course should I take to impress colleges?
Dear Babs,
I’m trying to pick my courses for next year, and I want to know which A.P. course I should take to impress colleges, A.P. Bio or A.P. U.S. History (I’m already taking A.P. English and A.P. Calc, but my school doesn’t recommend taking any more than three courses).
-Ambitious Peter
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Dear A.P.,
Well, that really depends on what sort of colleges you are applying to. If you are going to apply to a school for the sciences, an engineering program, or plan on doing pre-med, then I think A.P. Bio makes a lot more sense. If, however, you’re just applying to a general liberal-arts or humanities program, than take whichever class you like better.
The real end-goal of an A.P. course is to get college credit before you even apply to college. Sure, they look good, but you’ll also save possibly thousands of dollars and the boredom of taking “Bio 101″ or “Intro to American History” with 300 other of your “closest” friends. So take whichever course you think you’ll be more likely to take in college, and want to bypass a general pre-req. Some schools require every freshman to take a science class. If science isn’t your thing, you might actually want to take A.P. Bio now, as you’ll probably get more teacher-attention and the course might be a bit easier. Just remember that if you want college credit, you’ll need to get at least a 3 on your A.P. exams (and more likely a 4).
It doesn’t really matter which A.P. course you take. Three A.P.’s is an impressive course load, regardless. Just take the one that is more likely to get you out of an onerous college course.
Good Luck!
-Babs
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 10:33 am and is filed under Admissions, Dear Babs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
