Biology at BHS

My senior daughter took AP Bio, AP Lang&Comp, and AP US History junior year. This is pretty common for academic kids in AC, but it is a lot of work. The classes were great and she learned a tremendous amount. The teachers were excellent. I recommend those three AP's junior year if you think your student can handle the workload. In addition, my daughter took a 4th AP class that year (Art History). She managed to get A's in all of these classes but she did homework seven days a week. It was hard but she's glad she did it. Best of luck to you and your son.

I love the way you are thinking about this! Some parents and kids are convinced that they need to take as many AP classes as possible to get into a "good" college. 

I cross-checked with my kid, who took AP Bio at BHS; she definitely did NOT have 2 hours of homework per night, and she loved the class. If your kid is enjoying AP Chem and isn't overwhelmed by it, then AP Bio is a good fit. But balance is crucial, and each AP class comes with extra homework; don't overload on them, and don't sign up for a subject you don't like. 

I recommend reading what Denise Pope of Challenge Success says about it (she's a education expert who runs a program at Stanford aimed at getting families off the race to nowhere. Here's a transcript of a short video she did on this very subject: 

"When your child is enrolled in middle school or high school, there will be a time when you have to make a decision about how many honors or AP classes they should take. And the answer is: it depends. And it really depends on the kid, it depends on the schedule that they have in school and the schedule that they have out of school. What you want to do is look at the big picture, look at how much homework is this kid going to bring home. An honors class or an advanced class usually has significantly more homework and may be harder for the kid to keep up if they also have a very full extracurricular life. The other thing to keep in mind is it's really the kid's choice, and when I say that I mean you don't want them to overload, so you can put the kibosh on it. But if someone wants to challenge themselves and take the plunge, you want to encourage that because it's usually about a love for that particular class. So my rule of thumb is don't take an honors or AP class unless you really love the subject, and if you feel you can handle it within the full schedule of looking at what you're doing in school and the other load that you have outside of school. And the final thing to say is don't be swayed by what the colleges say. You can absolutely get into college taking no honors or AP classes, and it may be that if you take too many honors or AP classes, you're gonna mess up your GPA, you're gonna run into stress and other problems, it's gonna hurt you in the long run. So don't try to game it based on what the colleges want; do it based on what your child truly loves and can handle."