3 sciences in sophomore year?

[SpiritedWarrior]

I may be doing 2-3 sciences for sophomore year. 

 

Current sophomore schedule:

Algebra 2/Precalc honors 

Pre IB English 10

Ap U.S Gov and Politics

Ap Physics 1

Ap Biology (a class for Juniors and seniors, but I have done really well in Biology Honors, so I am able to take it)

Chemistry honors (will hopefully help with Ap Biology) 

Pre IB Spanish 3 (only class that is not weighted)

Yup.... There is no off period for me, so this will be a tough schedule. I am also doing sophomore soccer, and plenty of extracurricular since I want to go into an ivy school. I have a passion for the sciences, but is this schedule a bit too hard? Should I remove Ap Bio? I want to get all A's like I did in Freshman year (above a 95 percent), so I don't know if my grades will suffer with a schedule this hard. 

 

Edited July 26, 2016 by SpiritedWarrior

[TheNintendoChip]

Depending on which Group 4 [Science] IB Class you're going to take, you might want to drop either AP Physics or AP Bio. I know that, especially with Bio, there's a lot of overlap between IB Bio and AP Bio. With that said, in both Sophomore and Junior year, I took two science classes (Honors Physics & Honors Chemistry in 10th, IB Chemistry and IB Biology in 11th) -- so I know what it's like to take multiple science classes at once. I can assure you that it's not as difficult as it is daunting. I should mention that I was an A student throughout highschool. 2 is definitely manageable -- 3, however, I'm unsure. If you're worried due to the fact that they're all AP classes, I wouldn't worry. Many of my friends took AP Gov & AP Macro in 10th grade, along with a variety of other AP classes. If available, they took AP Spanish Lang/Lit., and AP Bio/Chem. All of us were required to take AP English Lang and AP Euro. For one in particular, the amount of AP classes was staggering; They had AP Gov, Macro, Eng Lang, Spanish Lang, and Euro. They also happened to be in my Honors Physics class, and seemed to be doing fine (actually, pre-cal seemed to be what hurt them. This is only because of the teacher we had though).

At my school, we were not allowed to take AP Physics/Biology without having taken Chemistry (which I thought was a silly rule). Due to this, I had to take Honors Physics over AP Physics, and cannot afford you guidance as to how hard it is or what the content is like. I can help you with AP Biology, though, given that it is similar to IB Biology, which I took. You will not need much chem knowledge for AP Biology. The only time you really deal with chem is in Biochem (clearly) and with metabolic pathways (Krebs/Calvin Cycle). And even then, the chem knowledge would only serve to better your understanding, but was not imperative.

I would like to point out that, while the strength of your schedule is important, universities do not want to see you overburden yourself and fail. They want to see you excel while challenging yourself both in and outside of school. I believe that you should be fine dropping an AP, given that you're also focusing on your extracurriculars. IB will make up for what you might have "lost" in 10th grade. And, in the event that you have spare time, you can always take the class online, DE, or self-study for the exam.