Also, there are some universities that don’t consider AP Lang to be that hard, so they won’t give credit for it (for example, the College of William and Mary). But they do give credit for AP Lit.

I wouldn’t suggest that you take more than five anyways, unless you are a total genius. You may not have the time to do all the extra reading that you will have to do in AP Lit. Also, taking 6 APs instead of 7 is not considered awful in any way.

If you find out that you need the Lit score for some reason, you might just go in and take the test without doing the class. You don’t really have to study for AP English tests to do well (unlike in all of the rest of the subjects). All you would have to do would be to look over some rhetorical strategies and look at some samples of essays to see what makes you you need to do to make a high score on the essays.

As for the AP classes and looking good on applications, I don’t think English will make that much of a difference if you’ve got 5 or 6 other AP classes on your schedule. That’s a lot!

AP English is a lot more work than regular English, just in the time you have to put into it reading and writing essays, never mind studying for the AP exam. You’ll probably need that time for your other AP classes. I was a bit pressed with 6 AP tests to study for last year, and only 4 AP classes. If you’re set on taking the other AP classes/tests, and you already have a 5 on the Language test, then I would definitely recommend downgrading to regular English. It’s probably not worth the extra effort.

If you can manage it though go for it. I’m taking quite a few AP classes next year too.

Good luck.