Careers · Academic Planning · Dual Enrollment & AP

Building Your Science Sequence: A Course-Selection Guide for Advanced Science Students

DRAFT — review before publishing to students

Course selection sheets ask you to pick classes for next year. What they're actually asking, if you're on an advanced science track, is a bigger question: what kind of scientist are you becoming, and what evidence do you want to hand a college admissions office — or your own future self — that you can already do the work? This page lays out a real, current course sequence at Battlefield High School and across Prince William County Schools, explains why the order matters more than most students realize, walks through the full menu of options open to you as a junior or senior, and makes the case for the course I happen to teach and believe in most: DE Biology, Prince William County's dual-enrollment biology course with NOVA.

The default sequence, and why the order isn't arbitrary

For a student on an advanced science track, the recommended shape looks like this:

9th grade: Advanced Biology. 10th grade: Advanced Chemistry. 11th and 12th grade: at least two more science courses, chosen from the wide menu below.

That sophomore-year chemistry placement isn't really about getting a head start on any one downstream course — it's part of the broader scaffold every strong high school scientist should have in place before choosing among the many junior- and senior-year options. Biology, physics, earth and space science, and anatomy & physiology all lean on the same chemical vocabulary: equilibrium, energy transfer, molecular structure, the behavior of solutions. A student who has that vocabulary solid by 10th grade walks into whichever advanced course they choose junior year already fluent, instead of learning the chemistry and the new subject at the same time.

Your junior and senior year menu

This is the part of the sequence with real choice in it, and most students don't realize how wide the menu actually is. Depending on your interests, schedule, and prerequisites, your options at Battlefield include:

AP Biology — exam-based college credit, biology track.
DE Biology — dual enrollment with NOVA; see below for why this is worth a close look.
AP Chemistry — exam-based college credit, chemistry track.
DE Chemistry — dual enrollment with NOVA, articulates to a real college chemistry course.
AP Physics 1 — algebra-based introductory physics (double-check this exact course title with your counselor when you register).
AP Physics C — calculus-based physics, best taken once your math sequence has caught up to support it.
Biology II: Survey of Anatomy and Physiology — a separate advanced elective from DE Biology, for students especially drawn to human biology and pre-health tracks.
Advanced Earth Science — typically the entry point into other advanced earth and space courses like Oceanography and Astronomy, though there can be more than one pathway into those courses depending on your schedule.

Prince William County requires an 11th or 12th grade student to have at least a 3.0 GPA to enroll in a dual-enrollment course, and its policy is explicit that you take either the AP or the DE version of a given subject for credit — not both, since they cover the same ground. What most students underuse is the option to double up: taking two science courses in the same junior or senior year — say, AP Physics 1 alongside DE Biology, or DE Chemistry alongside Biology II: Anatomy and Physiology — is a realistic way to build a deeper, more specific science record before you graduate, as long as your overall schedule and workload can support it. Talk to your counselor about sequencing if you're considering this.

Whichever combination you're weighing, the underlying choice between AP and DE comes down to this: AP credit depends on a single national exam score in early May, and every college sets its own minimum score and decides for itself what that credit is worth. DE credit is earned the way any college credit is earned — by completing the course — and shows up as an actual grade in an actual college course on a real transcript, months before you've even applied anywhere.

The case for DE Biology, specifically

DE Biology is the course I teach, and it's my favorite for a reason: it's a genuinely strong option for pre-health students, for future biological scientists, and it also satisfies Virginia public universities' laboratory science admission requirement — so it's doing double duty as both a credential and a requirement you'd otherwise have to fulfill some other way. Three separate things make it valuable, and they aren't the same thing even though they get talked about as if they are:

Guaranteed credit. Unlike an AP score, a passing grade in DE Biology converts to real NOVA credit regardless of how any single test day goes. If you are continuing at NOVA or transferring within Virginia's public system, that credit is essentially locked in.

Proof, not just a grade. A weighted "A" in an advanced or AP class tells a college that you did well in your high school's version of a rigorous class. A grade in an actual community-college course — with a real college course number, on a real college transcript — tells an admissions reader, including ones at out-of-state and elite institutions who have never heard of your high school, that you have already done the thing they're trying to predict you can do: complete real college-level instruction and earn a real college grade in it.

It travels. Students from this DE Biology course have gone on to attend the University of Virginia, Duke, Yale, Harvard, William & Mary, and Virginia Tech, among others — not because a single course guarantees admission anywhere, but because "I already succeeded in a college biology course while still in high school" is exactly the kind of concrete evidence that strengthens an application and a recommendation letter, at flagship state schools and elite private schools alike.

A realistic four-year map

One common sequence for an advanced-science-track student (exact scheduling depends on your math sequence and your counselor's input)
Grade	Science course	What it builds toward
9th	Advanced Biology	Foundational biology, lab technique
10th	Advanced Chemistry	The shared scientific vocabulary every advanced course above assumes
11th	DE Biology or AP Biology, possibly paired with a second science	College-level biology; NOVA credit and lab-requirement credit if DE
12th	DE Chemistry or AP Chemistry, possibly paired with AP Physics, Advanced Earth Science, or Biology II: Anatomy & Physiology	College-level chemistry; NOVA credit if DE; a broader, more specific science record

Students aiming at engineering programs specifically should note that an advanced math sequence pairs well alongside AP Chemistry and AP Physics — chemistry, physics, and math reinforce each other at this level, especially for stoichiometry, equilibrium, and mechanics.

Why Battlefield specifically: Battlefield High School is designated a PWCS Center for Applied Science, Interactive, and Information Technology, which means the science-heavy course sequence described here isn't an extracurricular add-on — it's built into the school's core identity. That designation, combined with NOVA's dual-enrollment partnership, is part of why this sequence has produced strong outcomes at both in-state and highly selective out-of-state universities.

Which pathway sounds like you?

If you already know you're pre-health or bio-intensive, prioritize getting both DE Biology and DE Chemistry onto your transcript across 11th and 12th grade — two guaranteed college credits, two pieces of "I've already done this" evidence — and consider Biology II: Anatomy and Physiology as a third, non-DE elective if your schedule allows doubling up.
If you're leaning engineering or physical science, make sure an advanced math sequence runs alongside your chemistry and physics courses, and consider AP Physics C over AP Physics 1 once you have the calculus to support it.
If earth and space science is the pull, Advanced Earth Science is usually your entry point into Oceanography and Astronomy — ask your counselor about the specific pathway, since there's more than one way in depending on your schedule.
If you genuinely don't know yet which of these you are: that's what 11th grade is for. Taking one AP science and one DE science in the same year, in different subjects, is a reasonable way to collect real evidence about which mode — the single-exam AP format or the ongoing-coursework DE format — actually fits how you work best, before you have to commit to a college major.

Explore further

Dual enrollment (DE): A course taken in high school that simultaneously earns high school credit and actual college credit through a partner institution — in PWCS's case, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA).
Weighted GPA: A GPA calculation that gives extra point value to grades earned in advanced, AP, or DE courses, to reflect their added difficulty relative to standard-level courses.
Course articulation: The formal agreement specifying exactly which college course (by number and credit hours) a given high school course transfers into.
Laboratory science requirement: An admission requirement at Virginia's public universities calling for a set number of lab-based science courses; a course like DE Biology can satisfy this while also earning college credit.

Sources: Prince William County Schools course catalog (catalog.pwcs.edu), Science — Standard, Advanced Placement, and Dual Enrollment sections; Battlefield High School AP Sciences and NVCC Dual Enrollment pages (battlefieldhs.pwcs.edu). Student outcome examples and course menu reflect the author's own experience teaching this sequence and are offered as program experience, not a formal outcomes study. DRAFT — verify current PWCS graduation and dual-enrollment policy details (GPA thresholds, exact course titles and prerequisites, earth-science pathway options) with your school counselor before publishing, as district policy and course titles can change year to year.