It’s course selection night. You’ve got your snacks, some background music going, and your computer open. You’re sitting at the kitchen table staring at a spreadsheet at 9 p.m., wondering what to do about your student’s AP courses.
You remember hearing about your cousin’s friend’s neighbor taking eleven courses and they got accepted into a school with a fancy name. That must be what your student needs to one-up them and take twelve, right?
Your student only has six on the list for junior year. Nobody at this table knows whether that’s confidence or bad information.
Here’s what nobody says out loud at that table though: colleges don’t publish numbers.
That means you’re stuck guessing. And, like most people, probably guessing a bit high.
In short
For most students, four to eight AP courses across all of high school is plenty. The College Board’s own research finds the benefit levels off after about five AP exams, and the biggest gains tend to come from the first two.
What you’ll get here
- What colleges actually look at, which isn’t a count
- What each AP class really costs in hours and impact, with the research
- Four questions to help decide next year’s schedule
- A four-year plan you can mark up tonight, and get to bed earlier
- The signs you may have signed up for one too many, and how to fix it mid-year
Four to eight, and here’s why
One or two AP courses in tenth grade. Good. Two or three in each of the last two years. Also good. Easy enough.
Some advice: register your student into subjects they actually care about.
Rest assured, that range isn’t a compromise, and it’s definitely not too little. This is backed by years of evidence.
The College Board runs the AP program. They’ve done the work and have summarized all the research on AP load next to college outcomes.
The biggest gains come from the first and second AP courses. After about five AP exams, the benefit to first-year college grades levels off and stops being statistically meaningful.
Past a certain point, more AP classes doesn’t necessarily equal measurable gains.
Say what? Let’s read that again. The organization that sells you the exams is the very one telling you that five is where the curve flattens.
Back to your cousin’s friend’s neighbor taking eleven courses… While it may earn them bragging rights and sound impressive, they’re most likely doing little more than overworking, stressing themselves out, and losing valuable sleep.
What you might see if you Google this
If you Google something like “how many AP classes should I take,” you’ll find a lot of advice landing in the neighborhood of three to five for competitive applicants. You’re also likely to see that students admitted to the most selective colleges may take seven to twelve.
None of that is wrong. It’s just answering two different questions, which is where it gets confusing.
Those numbers describe what accepted students did, not what made the difference. Both can be true at once.
A student at a hyper-selective college or university may have, in fact, taken eleven APs, and they were admitted. The research, however, shows that past about five courses, it didn’t change how they did once they got to college.
If your student is aiming at the most selective colleges, plan for the upper end of the range. But make sure each and every class has a clear reason. If they’re aiming anywhere else, which is most students, the lower end is plenty.
Colleges compare you to your own school, not to the rest of the country
Admissions readers do three specific things. Counting against a national standard isn’t one of them.
Admissions readers:
- They read your school’s profile. Every application arrives beside a listing of what your school offers. Four APs at a school that offers five reads as much stronger than five at a school that offers sixteen.
- They read the counselor’s checkbox. Most counselor forms ask how demanding your schedule was compared with what was available to you. “Most demanding” is the box to aim for, and you can usually earn it without maxing out.
- Lastly, they read grades and patterns. An A in a regular class beats a C in an AP class. Every time. Grades that rise from ninth to eleventh grade tell a better story than a strong start that fades.
What they rarely (and we’ll say likely never) care about is an AP course in a subject your student doesn’t care about and will never look back at.
Passion has its place at the reading table.
The hours come out of sleep, because there’s nothing else left
The price of more than you need:
Since we now know that the number alone of AP courses doesn’t matter much, let’s look at some good reasons not to overextend.
In short, more work means more work, means less sleep, means less focus, means less of everything.
In a study of more than 4,000 students at high-performing high schools, Stanford researchers, led by Denise Pope found something significant about time spent on homework. The study found students averaged about three hours a night. That’s not the point though.
What they point to, from earlier research, is that the benefit of the homework plateaus around two hours. Past that, they tie it to stress, headaches and stomach aches, less sleep and time away from their lives.
Imagine adding more to your student’s plate with more than necessary AP courses. What would that do to their stress and anxiety? To their sleep?
Add in the CDC’s recommendation of eight to ten hours of sleep a night, which most American teens already miss and you’ve got a formula for burnout.
Here’s the straight arithmetic. The ninth AP doesn’t come out of free time. Such a thing at that number doesn’t exist. It comes out of their sleep, out of the sport, their social life, family time and everywhere else. That would be all to take classes they don’t need.
Back at the table, you add up junior year as it stands: six APs, cross country, a weekend job, and an hour of driving most days. Nobody says anything for a second.
Four questions that decide what to do
This takes ten minutes:
1. Why this class for my student?
Weak answers: it looks good, I have friends there, the teacher is super easy.
Good answers: I love this subject. I want to study it in college. I want to find out if I do.
Hot take: If your student can’t give the good answer, they’re probably better off without it.
2. What does the whole week actually look like?
Count and consider everything: Classes, practices, rehearsals, afterschool job, driving time, family time. Put real hours beside each.
For homework estimates, ask any students you can find who took the class last year. Don’t rely on the course catalog.
3. What comes off if this goes on?
The laws of physics only allow us to be one place at a time and contrary to popular belief, multitasking isn’t real. Something has to give.
Name it early. Name it now. Be on purpose about it instead of finding out in November which thing quietly died.
4. What’s the real exit plan?
Find the drop deadline. Do it before the term starts. Write it down somewhere you’ll remember.
Decide with your student together what would make dropping the right call. Is it a grade below a certain point? Is it the sleep deficit? Is it something else?
A student who knows there’s an exit will try a harder class. Knowing you can stop makes it easier to start.
They’ll work the list. Biology stays. They want to study it. AP European History goes. Why? Because they asked, “Why is this even a thing?”
Your student was relieved. You were nervous. That’s a normal night.
The details are made up. The pattern isn’t.
A four-year shape that works
A pattern, not a prescription.
| Year | AP load | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 9 | 0, maybe 1 | Build habits. Protect sleep. Try things. |
| Grade 10 | 1 to 2 | One in a strength, one in a curiosity. |
| Grade 11 | 2 to 3 | The heaviest year. Testing and activities stack here. |
| Grade 12 | 2 to 3 | Depth in what they’ll study, not a victory lap. |
That lands at five to nine courses, and every one has a reason behind it.
One caution about junior year. It already carries the most weight, which makes it the worst year to add one more “just in case.”
Five signs they took one too many
- Your student wakes up groggy and can’t get going in the mornings… or throughout the day.
- Their grades are slipping, even and especially in the easy classes.
- They quit the activities they love and only want to keep things that go on the transcript.
- Your student is checking out of family time… every week.
- They can’t remember the last thing they read or did for fun.
If two or more are true, that’s your cue to talk to the counselor before the drop deadline. Dropping a class in January is a teeny tiny thing. Finishing the year flat and burned out is not.
Four other ways to show you can handle college work
College prep isn’t just one thing. Admissions readers are looking for a holistically prepared person. AP is but one element. It’s not the only one. Admissions readers also recognize:
- Dual enrollment. Taking an actual college course for actual college credit.
- A capstone or independent research project. This shows the kind of personal initiative a test score can’t.
- Competitions and real work. This includes things like a science fair project, a robotics build, or a job held for two years. Any kind of job.
- Depth in one subject. Passion projects continued past the classroom.
A student with four AP courses, a two-year research project and a steady job (no matter what) often reads much stronger than one with nine APs and nothing more.
One shows a person, operating in the real world. The other shows someone who can make a good-looking transcript.
How we think about it here
Fair warning: we’re a school, so we have a bias. Ours is that nobody wins a prize for the longest course list.
Classes here at Maharishi School average about twelve students. That means that course selection is a conversation with a lot of thought behind it. It’s not a form or a check mark.
A teacher who has the time to get to know your student, to see their strengths and where they’re struggling, how they think, and how they’re shaping up academically, can recommend them to “take that one, skip this one,” and mean it.
“…high achievement doesn’t come at the cost of mental health or any other kind of health. That high achievement is coming as a product of the level of care that our students are getting in so many other ways.”
Brett Potash, Head of School
We’d much rather see three courses done deeply and fully, so they not only pass but comprehend, than six technically survived.
We also build deep rest into the day instead of treating it as what’s left over. Phones stay away during the school day.
One in three of our graduates goes on to a top-50 college or university.* Juniors and seniors can also take on a two-year capstone through our Global Impact Diploma. It’s the kind of depth a course count can’t show.
Brett Potash, our Head of School, says the goal plainly:
“In a lot of schools the focus is on, what are those external outcomes? What are those test scores? What are those college acceptances?… And of course, we do really well in those areas, but that’s not the focus of our educational model. That’s not where we start.”
Brett Potash, Head of School
Your next step
If you want to see a demanding school without the frenzy, come visit. Bring the course list. We’ll go through it with you.
*Classes of 2020–2026. Of 63 graduates, 21 enrolled at a college or university ranked in the top 50 by U.S. News & World Report (National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges). International universities excluded.
Sources: College Board, Summarizing Research on the Relationships Between the Number of APs, AP Performance, and College Outcomes (Beard, Hsu, Ewing & Godfrey, June 2023). Stanford Graduate School of Education, “More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests,” covering Galloway, Conner & Pope, “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools,” The Journal of Experimental Education (2013). U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, About Sleep, and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System sleep data for high school students (2025).
Rapid-fire Q&A
How many AP classes should I take?
For most students, four to eight across all of high school. One or two in tenth grade, then two or three in each of the final two years, in subjects they care about.
Is there a point where more AP classes stop helping?
Yes. The College Board’s own research summary finds the largest gains come from the first and second AP, and that after about five AP exams the added benefit to college grades and degree completion levels off.
Do colleges require a certain number of AP classes?
No. Colleges don’t publish a number. Admissions readers compare your course load with what your own school offers, using the school profile and the counselor’s rating of how demanding your schedule was.
Is it better to get an A in a regular class or a B in an AP class?
Grades and rigor both matter, but a strong grade in a class your student can handle beats a weak grade in one they cannot. Grades slipping in the easy classes is a sign the load is too heavy.
How much homework does an AP class add?
It varies by course and teacher, so ask students who took it last year rather than trusting the catalog. Stanford research found students at high-performing schools average about three hours a night, and cites earlier research that the benefit plateaus near two.
What should I do if my student took too many AP classes?
Talk to the counselor before the drop deadline. Watch for groggy mornings, grades slipping even in the easy classes, quitting the activities they love, and checking out of family time. Dropping one class mid-year costs far less than finishing the year burned out.
What else shows colleges I can handle hard work?
Dual enrollment, a capstone or independent research project, competitions, a long-held job, and real depth in one subject all count.
