Hi willagayle,
Are you talking about junior year or sophmore year? AP English, AP social science, etc are usually only for Junior or above.
My older daughter is a sophmore. She is taking AP chem plus 4 other honor classes this year. But she plan to take 4-5 AP classes next year. For sophmore year, I would suggest just try one to get a feel of the workload and difficulty. If he can handle it, then go all out in junior and senior year. There is difference between Honor class and AP class in terms of workload. Keep in mind that you also need to take AP exam too.
How many AP classes you need to be competitive in top universities? That is hard to say but more than a couple is my guess :-). That also has something to do with what is offered by the school. For example, if your school only has 5 AP classes and you take all of them, then you are taking the hardest classes it has to offer. But if your school offers 20 AP classes and you only take 2, then you can not claim the same way.
My daughter is in a public school. Her transcript clearly indicates the course level (Honor or AP). The school even gives 1 point extra for Honor/AP classes, so their weighted GPA could get to 4.6 or something like that. But many universities recalculate GPA so they can compare students in a consistent manner. Each university has its own way of GPA recalculation, some take away the extra points for AP/Honor, some strip away non-academic classes such as band and some do not include 9th grade GPA at all. It is just a mess.
