Are My Planned Senior Courses Much Harder Than My Junior Year Courses?Answered
Hello!
I am currently a junior about to sign up for senior year courses. I know this greatly varies depending on the school you go to, but I was wondering if anyone had any general guidance on how big of a leap in the difficulty of my junior to senior courses would be?
For my junior year courses, I am confident I can end the semester with an A in all of them. However, my grade in physics will likely be a lower A (maybe around a 92%).
Junior Year:
- College-level English
- Pre-calc
- APUSH
- AP Physics 1
- AP CSA
- Spanish 4 (widely regarded, in my school, to be more difficult than AP Spanish)
- College-level astronomy
Senior Year Planned Courses:
- College-level English (just the next level up from the junior year course)
- AP Statistics
- AP Gov
- AP Physics 2
- Data structures (next step up from AP CSA)
- AP Spanish
- AP Environmental science
If anyone has any insight to how much more difficult my planned senior courses would be, that would be extremely helpful (especially regarding AP Gov, which is a yearlong class).
Thank you!
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2 answers
I've taken a few of these classes, but obviously, the class really depends on the teacher.
I found AP Stats to be easier than honors pre-calc. Same teacher, I just fit better with the content. Most of my classmates thought the opposite, so really depends on how you think you interact with the material.
APUSH is universally recognized to be really hard. AP Gov should be not as difficult if you did well in APUSH, although again the caveat that your teacher could just suck.
Physics 2 will likely be harder. APES will likely be a little easier than astronomy, although I'm saying that with no knowledge of your astronomy class.
Spanish you said yourself, and I have no idea about the compsci/data science.
Try to ask others who have taken the classes at your school if you really want a clear picture.
Here's what I do know. Senioritis is REAL dude. I'm in it right now, have always taken the hardest classes I could, and in the second semester of senior year I have not-so-great grades even though I scaled back my course load a little. I already know what school I'm going to (T10 for context although I won't say which one lol) and it gets really hard to keep pushing when you've been pushing for so long. So, maybe, consider making your senior course load a little easier so you can do a few more teenager things before the college grind starts. 7 classes is a lot. Your admission is not going to depend on whether you took a single class senior year.
Good luck, you're going to do great things no matter what!
Hi @amallios!
I don't think there will be a huge leap here. Most of your junior-year courses are APs (or at least right below), and the more difficult senior year courses are progressions of what you will have already taken.
I'd only be concerned if, for example, your junior year schedule had very few APs and your senior year schedule was full of them. At this level I think the progression in difficulty will feel quite natural.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.
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