During the 11th grade, students have the following courses to take – English 11, AP US History or Honors Virginia History, Physics or AP Physics, Math, World Language or Elective, and two more electives.
You can see that students start having a lot more options in their courses, which is why course schedules start diverging a lot more in the 11th grade. You can also see that students have more options for AP classes, so some students take as many as 6 AP courses in their 11th grade, and some take 1 or 2. The 10th grade should give students a better understanding of the course load that AP classes require, and students should use that as a way of figuring out how much they’ll be able to handle in the 11th grade.
As usual, I’ll give you a few more details about each course based on my experiences.
English 11 requires a lot of reading and writing. This course is taught in conjunction with the history course, so both teachers may do group projects together, and you’ll have the same peers in both courses. Usually, these courses will be back to back (I had AP US History in my 6th block and English in my 7th block, and both classrooms were right next to each other). AP US History is a lot of reading and writing, and there’s a lot of analysis of documents. This course is very interesting, and it’s a lot like World History, except there’s a lot less breadth and a lot more depth. You’ll be learning a lot of important historical facts that’s happened in the country since and before its inception. You also have the option of taking Honors Virginia History as an alternative to AP US History – the choice is up to you.
You have the option of taking either Honors Physics or AP Physics. I chose to take Honors Physics, since I was taking a pretty heavy course load otherwise (5 AP classes). I found Honors Physics to be very difficult, and did a lot of studying of concepts and practice problems during the night time. For physics, I think most students agree that doing a lot of practice problems and understanding the solutions really helps with quizzes and exams. There’s quite a bit of math, so knowing how to solve problems and what approaches to take really helps students figure out how to solve questions in the test environment. For AP Physics, a prerequisite or corequisite is BC Calculus, since a lot of the derivations of formulas involve calculus. If you’re taking honors physics, there’s no pre or corequisite.
For math, you’ll continue on your path. Since I had taken BC Calculus in 10th grade, I took Multivariable Calculus my first semester and Linear Algebra my second semester.
Many students will take an AP language course their 11th grade. I took AP German during 11th grade. You can also forgo the language to take an elective instead. This is up to you. Generally, AP language courses are more difficult than the other courses, particularly because the student needs to be sufficiently prepared for the AP exam by the end of the year.
There are two elective courses that students can take during the 11th grade. Most likely, you’ll have a discussion with your advisor, who will help you choose a senior research lab to take during the 12th grade. Based on what senior research lab you’re interested in, this will influence what two elective courses you decide to take. I decided to take AP Macro/Microeconomics and AP Chemistry, since I was planning to be in the “Chemical Analysis and Nanochemsitry” research lab for my 12th grade.
I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions. All the best! - Naman
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