SAN CLEMENTE : Student First to Ace 5 Advanced Classes

Stefan Mohler’s interests are not atypical for a 17-year-old--video games, tennis, girls and “spending as little time studying as possible.”

While that might be the recipe for academic disaster for most students, the San Clemente High School senior has set new standards for classroom excellence.

Mohler recently became the first student ever in the Capistrano Unified School District to take five advanced-placement classes in one semester and earn an “A” in each. The district has been offering the classes since 1986.

“It was not a conscious effort to be the first, but it was a conscious effort to improve my chances of getting into college,” said Mohler, who hopes to study engineering or computer design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Cornell University.

The advanced courses Mohler aced last semester were government/international relations, literature and composition, biology, calculus and computer science, and he got “A-pluses” in the latter three. The yearlong courses are equivalent to college courses.

For example, in a regular high school government course, a student might be expected to read the textbook and maybe one or two other books. In an advanced-placement government course, the student would be expected to read as many as 10 books and write a research paper, besides taking regular exams.

The lure for students is that if they pass an advanced-placement class and the standardized test that accompanies it, they receive college credit for that course and, as university freshmen, can begin taking advanced courses.

“Advanced-placement courses get into greater depth, and the students are expected to critically analyze the issues,” said San Clemente High School Principal James Krembas. “Whereas any history student would be expected to know that two of the causes of World War I were imperialism and nationalism, in the advanced course they would take that a step further and go into the roots of imperialism and nationalism.”

Because the advanced-placement classes are so difficult and potentially time-consuming, rarely are students allowed to take more than three at a time, but Mohler managed to persuade his advisers that he could handle the workload.

“He had to show that he would be willing to make the commitment and possessed the tenacity to achieve,” said Edmund Martinez, the school’s advanced-placement coordinator. “We looked at his track record, and we decided that in his case we could make an exception.”

Mohler said his ability to quickly grasp most mathematics concepts allows him to spend more time on his weaker subjects, government and literature.

“Math and science are easier for me, because . . . if something happens once, it will always happen again,” Mohler said. “In history or philosophy or literature, because something happened once doesn’t mean it will happen again.”

Mohler said he studies about an hour a day, usually after three hours of tennis and unspecified amounts of time on games, girls and socializing.

“I’m not a socialite, but I like people, so I try to get as much out of my five hours in class so I can spend as little time as possible outside of class doing homework,” Mohler said.