There has been a debate for many years over what grade is the hardest: some may say freshman year because of the switch from middle school to high school, or senior year because of “senioritis”, but many people end up saying junior year is the hardest.
The reason junior year is so intense is because of the workload juniors tend to put on themselves due to the classes they take. This is why we are making a guide to what core classes to take based on how stressful you want your junior year to be.
Stress level 1: Easy
If you are looking for a relatively easy junior year, you should take CP English 11. This class will teach the basics. Quizzes will not be as often as they would be in a DE or AP English, giving students plenty of time to study and learn the material.
For History, there is CP United States history. This class provides all the general information on the history of the U.S. This class mostly contains notes, tests, and quizzes with additional assignments throughout the year.
For Science, Anatomy is a pretty stress free and interesting class. You get to learn about all the parts of the human body and do interesting labs in the class.
If you took Geometry your sophomore year, Algebra two would be the perfect class to pair with your knowledge from Algebra one and Geometry. If you took Algebra two your sophomore year, CP Precalculus will give you the basics for Calculus and will not be too heavy on the workload.
Stress level 2: Medium
DE (Dual Enrollment) classes are great options if you are feeling like working but not constantly being overloaded. Mountain Gateway is a local community college that provides high school students with college credit classes (DE) that they won’t have to get again if they attend another college. For example, DE English, DE U.S. History, and DE Pre-calculus are all challenging classes, but they lack the constant homework, essays, textbook readings, etc. that the AP classes have. There are a few medium stress level science classes such as CP Physics and AP Environmental. You might hear these two names and think they deserve to be in the hard section, but they aren’t as bad as they seem. CP Physics provides you with lots of homework but is not nearly as challenging as other sciences. AP Environmental Science might seem intimidating because it is an AP course, but since it is online through Virtual Virginia the stress level is not as high.
Stress level 3: Hard
If you are all about challenging yourself with the hardest classes, then we have the perfect schedule for you. Starting off with history, we have APUSH (AP United States History). This is the hardest history class available for juniors and it is definitely stress level three. There are textbook readings for almost every chapter and the tests are very difficult to help prepare you for the end of the year exam.
For science, AP Chemistry is considered one of the hardest AP classes in the whole school. It is the next level to Chemistry H which is what many sophomores take.
For English, many think that AP English is really hard, and although it’s the hardest option, it really isn’t that stressful. There is a large amount of writing and reading, but other than that it is very lowkey.
Lastly is math class. The hardest available math class is Pre-calculus AP. These are the hardest available classes to take junior year.
Although there are many class options for Juniors, these are a few to help you get started and help you understand more about the different stress levels these classes are.
