Quote: "but my brother, who is going into his sophomore year in college (weird, eh?) says that colleges only look at your GPA;"
this is not true. in fact, colleges weigh in your extracurriculars a lot (too much imo). they also look at SAT/ACT and AP scores. even if you get a B in an AP class, and a 3 on the test, that looks much better than getting an A in the equivalent normal-level class.
Quote: "There are ways to make a class where you already know most of it much less boring. For instance, you could help teach the other students who are having trouble (if you enjoy that sort of thing). Or if you talk to the teacher, show them what you can do, and ask if you can work on a special project in class on top of the assignments they give you, they might be okay with it. Heck, you might even be allowed to work on a DBPro project for 45 minutes each school day. That's golden!"
ya, if you have a nice comp sci teacher, this is very possible. during both years of comp sci for me, it was clear that i understood almost all of the material. so i helped out a lot and my teacher would never bug me when i was working on my personal projects.
also, don't always take a class purely based on academics. sure, in comp sci i didn't learn a whole lot that was new. but, i had a great time because i had a lot of friends in my class. it was actually one of my favorite classes because it was also laid back/less stressful than my other classes. and don't forget the easy A and 5 on the AP test
