How many AP courses, and what AP Courses, should I take in my Freshman Year of high school to go to a ivy league?

Usually ivy league students take around 0-2 APs freshmen year, 2-3 sophmore year, 3-5 junior/junior year. In total students aiming for selective schools take around 7-12 aps depending on the amount of APs provided by the school.

Personally, I would say start by taking 1 AP freshmen year in order to test the waters. You'll just need to make sure that by the end of senior year they add up to around 7-12. Keep in mind that your performance in these classes impacts your GPA, so overwhelming yourself for the sake of showing course rigor at the cost of your GPA isn't worth it. Take an optimum number of APs that you are sure you can handle, but also challenge yourself to a certain extent.

This might vary depending on how big your school is and what courses are offered. I would suggest looking over your school's course catalog for AP courses, and deciding which ones you plan to do.

The courses you choose should depend on your future plans and difficulty. If you know that you want to go into a specific field, make sure that you choose courses that relate to that. When considering difficulty, you may want to take easier ones if you want to increase the number of AP courses without overworking yourself with all of the harder ones. If your school doesn't have the course that you want, look into an online course. I suggest in-person classes if possible because the experiences, atmosphere, and support are more direct, online options are available if that course is something you really want.

Once you've considered which courses you want to take throughout your high school experience, try to lay them out and decide when to do them. consider classes that require prerequisites, the optimal time to take a course, and how difficult your overall course load will be at a time.

For example, my school is fairly small. It offers AP Calc, Chem, Psych, World History, and English Language and Composition. While we don't have an AP Physics class, some people choose to take the exam after taking regular physics, but this usually doesn't work well. In my school, AP courses are generally only available to juniors and seniors. In my junior year, I took AP chem. I had done regular chemistry in my sophomore year, so my junior year was a good time to take AP before I forgot everything. I also took AP Psych, a much easier course. For my Senior year, I will take AP Calc, English, and World History. I needed to take pre-calc before AP calc and AP English is only for seniors, so these two classes I knew I had to take during my senior year. I didn't want to take two history classes during my junior year, but I wanted one in my senior year, so that's when I am choosing to take it.

If you're going for Ivy League, I suggest maximizing your AP courses as much as you feel comfortable. Depending on what you feel you can do, I suggest 1-2 AP courses during your Freshman year if you have that opportunity. Again, it really depends on your school and yourself, but planning out what you want to do can help. I do suggest starting with some easier courses (ie try to lay off science and math until you've got a good understanding of AP tests) such as social sciences. The differences between easy and difficult courses can be amazing. Chemistry had a lot to understand and grasp (although it is the funniest class I've ever had), and the exam came up quickly. However, Psychology was fairly easy and we had a good month to review for the exam without learning new material.

An additional thing to add is to consider the teacher and what you've heard of the class. If you're going to be a freshman, you might not know teachers yet, but as you go through the year consider the teachers that you like and don't like. If the teacher that you like teaches an AP class, take it. A good teacher makes things much easier. You might still have to deal with less favorable teachers for classes that you want to take, but a good teacher makes all of the difference. I wish you luck on your AP journey. Despite being difficult, they're the best classes to take because you connect with a lot of people there. (The inside jokes you'll develop are awesome!)