Should My Junior Choose AP Cybersecurity or Honors Spanish 3? A Parent’s Real Experience
It’s 10:17 pm on course selection night, and our kitchen counter is littered with half-eaten Goldfish crackers, a lukewarm mug of coffee, and a crumpled VHS course catalog with folded corners on two pages. My 16-year-old son Sam is slouched in a chair across from me, refreshing the r/ApplyingToCollege thread on his phone for the seventh time in 10 minutes. His border collie is chewing on the eraser of a math pencil under the table. The washing machine is banging through a final spin cycle in the basement, like it’s echoing the tension in the room.
“All the top CS majors say you need at least three STEM APs by junior year,” Sam says, not looking up. “Mia from robotics did AP Cybersecurity last year, and she got into her first choice tech school. But Ms. Lopez told me if I stick with Spanish, I can take AP Spanish senior year and test out of two gen ed semesters. What if I pick the wrong one?”
Sam’s been gunning for a computer science degree since he built a robot to feed our dog treats in 9th grade. He’s taken Honors Spanish every year since freshman year, mostly because he wants to be able to talk to his grandma, my mom’s mom, who lives outside Oaxaca and only speaks Spanish. He does 10 minutes of Duolingo on the bus every morning just for fun, which is more than I can say for any language I ever studied.
Valley High School added AP Cybersecurity two years ago, and it’s become the hot new class for any kid even thinking about STEM. Everyone says it looks great on college apps, which means every parent is pushing their kid to sign up for it. We went to the course registration info night earlier that week, and the counselor just said “rigor is key” and sent us on our way. No help with this specific call.
I told Sam to stop scrolling and write down every pro and con for both options, instead of letting all the noise bounce around in his head. For AP Cybersecurity: the good parts are that it’s an AP STEM class that aligns directly with his major goal, and the class hosts a cool capture-the-flag hacking competition at the end of the year. The bad parts are that it’s still a new program, the teacher is adjusting the curriculum every semester, only 42% of kids got a 3 or higher on the exam last year (I double-checked that number on the department website), and Sam was already signed up for AP Calc BC and AP Physics that year. The syllabus posted online listed 5-7 hours of homework a week, which would mean he’d have to drop the after-school open lab time for robotics— the thing he spends most of his free time working on.
For Honors Spanish 3: the good parts are that he already earned an A- in Honors Spanish 2, he knows and trusts Ms. Lopez, she stays at lunch every day for extra help, homework only averages 2-3 hours a week, he can keep his open lab time, and he can still get AP language credit senior year. The bad parts are that it’s not an AP this year, so it doesn’t add to his AP count for junior year, and a lot of people will say it’s less impressive than a STEM AP.
Instead of guessing or taking Reddit’s word for it, I told Sam to email both teachers directly with three specific questions. That’s the trick I now share with other parents who get stuck on this kind of choice: don’t rely on gossip or internet strangers. Go straight to the people who know the classes best.
Sam emailed the AP Cybersecurity teacher first, and got a surprisingly honest reply that same night. She confirmed the 5-7 hour homework estimate, the 42% pass rate, and added that if he already has two heavy STEM APs, she only recommends the class if he’s willing to give up an extracurricular he cares about. Then he emailed Ms. Lopez, who said that since he’s a strong student, holding off on AP Spanish until senior year would actually make him more prepared, leading to a higher exam score. She also noted that most colleges accept AP Spanish credit for gen ed requirements just as readily as they accept AP CS credit. For a CS major, that’s just as much tuition saved as getting out of a lower-level CS class.
After two days of thinking it over, Sam checked the box for Honors Spanish 3. We’re halfway through the school year now, so I can see how it’s playing out. Sam still makes it to open lab every Tuesday and Thursday, and the robot he’s been building for the state robotics competition got him accepted into a selective CS summer camp at the state university. He has an A in Spanish, and his end-of-semester cultural project on traditional tamale making with his abuela (they filmed a video of them cooking together over Christmas break) won second place at the school’s cultural fair. He calls his abuela every Sunday now to practice, which is something he never would have had the energy for if he was swamped with Cybersecurity homework every night.
Of course, there’s still the stress. Last month, Sam stayed up late looking at a post from a kid who got into his top choice school with five AP STEM classes by junior year, and he came downstairs asking if we messed up. I didn’t give him some vague speech about following your heart. I just pulled up his current activities list on his college application draft and said, “Compare what you have to what that kid posted. He has five APs and a one-line mention of robotics. You have a full year of work on a competition robot, a summer camp spot, and a project that ties your language learning to your family. Which one do you think admissions officers remember more?”
The thing I’ve learned from this, that I wish more parents would hear, is that no choice is ever going to be perfect. If you’re stuck between two classes, don’t start by asking which one looks better. Start by asking three specific questions: How much time will this take away from the things your kid already cares about and that matter to their goals? What’s the actual pass rate and homework load for this class at your school, not what the brochure says? Can your kid get the same benefit (AP credit, rigorous experience) later if they pick the other option now?
We won’t know for a year and a half if this choice was the right one for Sam’s college apps. Maybe he’ll end up regretting not adding the extra AP STEM class. But right now, he’s not falling asleep in first period every day, he’s excited about the things he’s working on, and he can have a 10-minute conversation with his abuela about her garden without me translating. That’s more than enough to be happy with, for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Should My Junior Choose AP Cybersecurity or Honors Spanish 3