 Jumping off the porch like mom's not home. What's up guys, it's Josh from Backing In with another video, specifically the next video in my Ivy League Secret series. For those of you that don't know, my name is Josh Beazley. I'm a writing sophomore at Yale University and I mainly post Yale vlogs and student interviews but every other week I get a chance to kind of reflect back on the college application process or my time in high school and give you guys some tips and share some of my stories to help you guys get into your dream school. Today's video is going to be about handling a heavy course load during high school, specifically as it pertains to AP classes. Are AP classes worth it? How many AP classes should I take? How do I manage a course load of AP classes? Josh, how did you take like 14 AP classes when you were in high school? These are the questions that I've been getting a lot over the past year and I will try to answer them in this video. I'll share some personal experiences and stories and give you guys some tips for being successful. Without any further ado, let's get into it. First of all, AP classes. Are they worth it? I kind of have a love-hate relationship with AP classes so let me explain. AP classes are two main purposes when it comes to your college application. The first of which is to show that you're taking a rigorous course load in a specific subject area. This looks really good for colleges and shows them that you're challenging yourself. The second of which is to boost your GPA. I hate saying this because I don't think it's the way it should be but if you want to boost your GPA, you're going to have to take a lot of AP classes. If you're a little confused, let me explain. When you're applying to college, you put two different GPAs on your college application. A weighted GPA and an unweighted GPA. A weighted GPA accounts for the number of AP and honors classes that you took throughout high school while a unweighted GPA does not. My high school was on a 5.0 scale which meant that an A in an AP class was a 5.0 and an A in an honors class was a 4.5 and then regular classes were just out of 4.0. This GPA gives colleges an idea of how much you challenge yourself throughout high school. If you have a 4.0 but you only took regular classes, your application is not going to be very impressive. And so when colleges see that above a 4.0 GPA, they see that you're really challenging yourself and you really want to succeed even in these hard classes. And I answer the question, yes, AP classes are worth it. I generally believe that for most of the AP classes, the curriculum is very well done and it allows high school classrooms to kind of be standardized across the country because they all have to teach the same curriculum. Obviously, a lot of AP teachers aren't really that good, but at least they're all shooting for the same goal. You'll get a chance to take a deep dive into a specific subject area at the college level while boosting your GPA at the same time. Yes, they're worth it. Take advantage of them. Next, let's talk about how many AP classes you should take. Now, to this point that I'm going to go into a little bit of a rant about how AP classes are interpreted in college applications. Like I said earlier, if you want to high GPA, you're going to have to take a lot of AP classes. That's the truth of the matter and you can't get around it. This means that rather than exploring cool classes at your school that might not be AP, you're forced to fill your schedule with useless AP classes that you may not be as interested in. Like there was no reason I took AP literature other than the fact that I wanted to boost my GPA. I'm definitely not the best writer and I do not like reading old, fancy literature and analyzing it in essays. Like that's just not my thing. I'm a STEM major, but hey, boosted my GPA. Do I think this is a good thing, though? Absolutely not. But at this point, there's just nothing you can do about it. So here's what I recommend. Take as many AP classes as you can have. Don't be afraid if they're not in the subject area you're interested in. Good to get exposure to classes like AP Lang or AP Comparative Government. Even if you're a STEM person like me, once you've locked this specific number of AP classes that you feel comfortable with into your schedule, use the rest of your classes to explore your interests. Whether this be photography, philosophy, or engineering. Now in my case, I took so many AP classes that I didn't have any room for cool classes in my schedule. Do I regret this a little bit? Because at the end of the day, colleges will cut you a little bit of slack. Like there's no reason I needed to come out of high school with a 46 GPA. Like I could have, I could have like taken one class. Like I could have taken a cool like engineering class at some academy across across the town, but like I didn't. I just chose to like shove AP environment until science in my schedule. Like I do regret it a little bit and think I could have had a little more like free, fun time in my schedule. But I'm also glad that I really challenged myself junior and senior year. Realize that colleges will cut you a little bit of slack. Okay, that's I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. Not every single class has to be AP. You do not have to do what I did. I was such a try hard in high school. Cut yourself a little bit of slack, but stay focused and keep those grades high is what I'm trying to say. The problem is that these cool classes that you might take aren't naturally standardized like the AP courses are. So they're not going to be looked upon as rigorous as your AP class. This rant could be a whole nother video in itself, but I hope you guys got the idea. Take as many AP classes that you're comfortable with. Fill the rest of your schedule with classes that demonstrate your passion or that you're interested in. If this is still a little confusing or you're unsure if you can handle a heavy course load of AP classes, I highly recommend checking out the sponsor of today's video, Crimson Education. You've been watching my channel for a while. I guarantee you've been recommended at least one of their videos that are created to help kids get into college. Crimson's main goal is to connect students with a team of strategists, mentors and tutors that will help them create a successful college application. Whether this be extracurricular and leadership projects, college essay topic brainstorming and editing or SAT prep and tutoring. The best part is that it actually works. And Crimson has had over 460 offers to top 50 schools just since 2015. For those of you applying internationally, don't worry. Crimson has over 25 offices across the globe. If you ever felt lost in your college apps or just feel like you really need to stand out in the growing competition nowadays, definitely get in touch with Crimson. They will make a plan that is customized and affordable for you. A lot of my friends at Yale did use college consulting services similar to Crimson, and they only had good things to say. I mean, they're at Yale. Leave the link below in the description. Definitely check them out. All right, back to the video. So if you're a madman like me and you do end up deciding to take five, six, seven AP classes in a single year, here's my tips. First of all, it all comes down to time management. That's definitely going to be the most important thing. You're trying to balance an insane course load. And if you don't plan time for all of your classes, you will fall behind and you will see a drop in your grades. You have to stay on top of this. This means keeping a calendar or agenda of all your assignments and what they do. This really helped me in high school. And it's something that I began to rely on more and more once I'm in college. All my assignments and due dates are in my G-Cal, so I could just check it on my phone or my computer instantly. I've also mentioned this in other videos. But my biggest tip is to use every single bit of free time that you have, whether this be the five minutes at the end of class or maybe a lunch period. Keep in mind that people always gave me crap because they'd walk into the baseball dugout and I'd be sitting there doing calculus homework, just because I didn't have time. Like, I'd get home at 9 PM and have other work to do. You just got to use your time wisely. You can't afford to let any time go to waste. So if this means skipping a lunch period with your friends to cramp or a test, you have to do it. My next tip is to assigning priority to each test or assignment. Every class is a different way that they weigh tests and homework and assignments and projects. You need to work on your homework and studying in accordance with the priority for each class. For example, if you have CalC homework that's due the next day, but you also have a US History Quiz and you only have time to do one, you're going to have to make a decision. Now what I would do is I'd look at my syllabus. I would realize that calculus homework is only 10% of my grade and that if I missed one of the 20 homeworks throughout the semester, that it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But then again, my US History Quiz is our 25% of my grade and we only have like two or three of those each semester. So missing one of those would be a really big deal. So in this case, you're going to want to prioritize your US History Quiz and study for that over your calculus. A lot of times during high school, especially when you're loading up on AP classes, you're not gonna actually have time to do all your work and get enough sleep every night. So you just have to make decisions on what's more important. Like I said, skipping one calculus piece set is not going to be that big of a deal and you probably won't even see it affecting your grade. But if you absolutely flunk a US History Quiz, that's gonna be a big hit. I think that's pretty much sums up my biggest tips for managing a heavy course load in high school. I've made videos on time management and my study tips for high school and those will probably have a lot of more helpful hints for you, so check those out if you're interested. I actually check out any video in my Ivy League Secret Series. They're all really good, especially if you're in high school right now or thinking about applying to college soon. If you found this video helpful, feel free to drop a thumbs up down below and it helps me and supports the channel a lot more than you think. If you think other people, like your friends, could benefit from this video, also share with them. We're trying to help as many people as possible. If you're new to the channel and this is the first video you've seen, hit that subscribe button. You won't regret it. More great content coming soon, especially Paris Vlogs. I don't have a little behind, like I've kind of backlogged all these videos. Like I am in Paris right now, but like if I don't post the videos from like summer session before, like the vlogs are in order, right? Each vlog is a specific point in the story of my life. So I need to post them in order, so I'll get those out of the way and then the Paris Vlogs. I've filmed a bunch, like I've been filming every single day, so get hyped for those. Comment down below any questions, comments, concerns, if you just want to say hi. I have been rambling on for way too long at this point, but I will see you guys next time. I've been facing.