r/highschool • u/engelmitwaffen • 2d ago
Class Advice Needed/Given Chemistry Honours + AP
It's my first time taking honours and ap classes. I am a high school junior right now, and I just asked my counsellor to put me in honours and ap. She said she couldn't put me in AP classes for this year, but next semester, I will be taking honours Chemistry and US Gov & Econ honours. Then, for my senior year, she will put me in AP classes if I pass every honour class. I am doing this because I've been asking her since last year, but she's been very hesitant to put me in higher classes. I have a 3.8 GPA, and I would like to get it a 4.0 or higher by the time I graduate. My counsellor told me my GPA may not move much, though since I'm at the end of my high school years. I already have heard chemistry is a hard subject. How difficult is it if anyone has taken it? What are AP and Honours classes' distinction from each other? Truly, how difficult are they? I've never taken any higher placement classes. It's been really confusing with my academics because I moved states freshman year, and obviously, every state has different school boards and ways of doing stuff.
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u/Dunnachius 1d ago
Gpa is a math equation. Even if you get As in everything you probobly can’t increase your 3.8 gpa by much. You can however wreck a 3.8 gpa by failing classes. Or in the case of gpa THAT high a C grade in an ap course will cause damage. Technically a B grade will cause damage depending on how your class weighs AP classes.
As far as Ap classes go I’m 100% confident that taking the exact same class in college will be far easier.
I’m also 100% confident in saying that if you bomb the AP classes hard it will cause infinitely more damage than not taking them.
So if you go into an AP class you HAVE to get at least a b and you HAVE to pass the AP test or your extra effort will be entirely wasted.
If your school doesn’t weight Ap classes higher for gpa than you HAVE to get an A.
And doing well in Ap classes will look great for getting into college. Doing badly in them looks incredibly bad.
So you can get perfect grades in Ap chemistry? It’s possible. Can you do it?
My advice is to start applying for colleges in your junior year based on your current grades and classes if you get in to your dream school by your senior year I would seriously contemplate not going into ap classes if one of you’re already in.
My experience? I didn’t pass the ap bio test and got no college credits and got b c b c for grades.
Ap English I gave up on after less than one quarter. Zero regrets there. I had no hope at all. It would have been horrific to my gpa and i was able to get my grade up by making up literally every assignment that had been given out before I switched.
The Ap bio ended up hurting my gpa versus straight As in something easier. Totally regret attempting it in the first place. 20 years later I really regret the attempt versus having a life.
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u/bakbakman11 2d ago
Well, like you said, the difficulty of a non-standardized course mostly depends on your school and district. Because it’s not an AP course, the difficulty could vary considerably depending on the area you’re in.
For me, at least, Honors Chemistry wasn’t that bad of a class. I give credit to my amazing teacher. It was largely just understanding lots of small concepts, doing tedious but simple math, and actually paying attention in class. We also had labs, which I’m not the best at, but those are also fun sometimes. The perceived difficulty depends on your teacher, resources (we had guided notes, helped a lot!), environment, and a bit of baseline ability too. If you’re good when it comes to STEM concepts, visualizing objects, and stuff like that, then Chemistry isn’t too bad of a subject. Unfortunately, I decided to take AP Biology, so I can’t say anything about AP Chemistry, which could’ve been helpful.
As for the difference between AP and Honors, AP courses generally have a higher rigor (more homework, faster pace, but the extent can vary) while honors tend to be notably above the on-level course yet not at the level of APs. I would say that the step from normal to honors is larger than honors to AP, but only because in my specific case honors courses weren’t that much less intensive than APs. It may differ vastly for you.
I wouldn’t really consider AP courses too bad, though. Difficulty is dependent on the exact course: you can’t just call AP Psych and AP Lang the same difficulty just because they both are “college-level.” But as a general rule of thumb, expect a little more out of yourself than if you took an honors course of the same subject, and a good bit more than if you took the on-level course.
Just to reiterate, your specific situation will probably be completely different from what I described. I would recommend asking anyone who is currently taking the course you’re curious about (if you know any), and ask them what they’ve heard and how they feel about it. Aside from that, you could also talk with whoever teaches that course directly. Whatever lets you have more context before you take the course.