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.