Intelligent students don’t need AP classes, and the score with which the College Board ordains you has little bearing on your current, or future trajectory.
Administering tests, and the test prep machine, are big business. The confluence of a College Board monopoly, and the USNWR rankings, manifests itself in an academic “space race” that generally rewards trophy hunting parents, and students, who make the conscious decision to throw money at a perceived problem.
There will be students that get 1’s and 2’s on AP exams that thrive in college and go on to suck out all the marrow of life. Conversely, some students that score 4’s and 5’s will struggle mightily, and perhaps flame out.
Ask yourself, what are the opportunity costs associated with paying for the privilege of over-studying towards standardized tests, rather than pursuing academic and extracurricular activities that truly interest you?
You’ll do yourself a disservice should you choose to measure your academic accomplishments with the Advanced Placement yardstick, regardless of your score.
Agree to an extent however S20 basically has enough AP credits to make him a sophomore at his school. He can graduate in 3 years. That’s $50k saved. Real money and he didn’t compromise any EC’s.
At many US high schools AP courses are the only way to show high “rigor.” There aren’t that many schools that offer IB or have moved to their own curriculum like in some privates. .
While my D’s AP credits aren’t helping her graduate early because of course sequencing issues, they did free up room for certifications, concentrations, and a minor if she chooses to add it.
There is a lot of complaining about scores right now but this seems to happen every year. (Same thing happens after PSAT/ACT/SAT scores are released). The reality is there is a lot of grade inflation at many HSs and I think the lower scores can highlight that issue.
What do you recommend to students who are good at math and complete precalculus in 11th grade or earlier? Do you recommend that they forego AP calculus if their high school offers it?
Yes, AP has gotten beyond its original purpose, which is to offer a means for strong advanced high school students to earn advanced placement in some subjects in college, allowing them either more opportunities to take additional courses of interest instead of typical frosh level courses whose material they already learned, or graduate earlier than they otherwise would have. But the original purpose is still valid, even if some AP courses and tests like human geography have strayed from that purpose.
AP in many public schools means you shift the cohort. That is more important than the score. However, if you got a 1 or 2, maybe AP wasn’t your gig. Except for physics LOL. Ap lites are a nice into for freshman. even if the credit offers no real value.
“He can graduate in 3 years.”
This is mostly an oversell. Don’t buy into it without some digging. Having the credits doesn’t necessarily mean they apply, or accelerate his pathway once you look at the degree plan. Nice sell though, you should hear the IB people selling that hard LOL. I have 3 IB kids and that is 30 credits at 2 unis and 25 at the third and it isn’t going to effect the timeline. Plus their APs!
Do your own due diligence is always a good practice. In our case he will come-in with 30+ credits. He’s going to a public school. They seem to be more generous with accepting credits.
How much they help or don’t could also depend on your major. If I’m in STEM I might consider NOT using AP credits for math and science classes. GPA boost and better grounding in your major. For general education requirements absolutely use your AP credits.
Could not agree with @gkunion more. I started a thread a year ago asking what the downside of not taking the AP exams was, I got a fair amount of push back. That said, my son’s situation is not everyone’s. (He would not be looking to get college credit for the APs and his schools is very well known for its rigor.)
The term “rigor” is an interesting one. Is rigor the be-all and end-all? What is it about rigor that is so incredibly important? Was rigor a thing prior to AP’s, or is it a symptom of dysfunction inherent to the College Board?
A generation or few ago, when there were only a few AP courses typically offered at high schools that did have them(English literature, calculus, foreign languages, US history, maybe sciences), rigor still matters to college admissions readers. A student who took the minimum high school graduation requirements may not look as good in the rigor department as one who took four years of English, math through precalculus or calculus, foreign language to level 4 or higher, all three of biology, chemistry, and physics, three or four years of social studies, some visual or performing arts, including honors courses when offered.
@ucbalumnus While I agree that a schedule covering the subjects you listed is important, and most certainly demonstrates a student’s willingness to challenge themselves, doesn’t the designation “most rigorous” mandate AP variants of those classes?
In TX you have to take AP or DC classes to have a chance at auto admit to UT and TAMU. I don’t think my kid or his peers miss out on anything because they are in these classes and no one is taking prep for AP.
@Aguadecoco My statement about prep concerned overall standardized testing, sorry for the confusion. Though, if faculty are teaching towards the AP test one could argue that is a very loosely defined example of “prep.”
Having different formats to understand where a student stands makes sense. A student with high grades and with high standardized test scores to match only goes to reinforce the academic performance of the student. If a high grade student has low standardized test scores or a lower grade student has higher standardized test scores then perhaps one method of judging the academic performance of the student was not correct. Maybe there should be a little deeper digging to help understand what are the best next steps for that student’s education. Improper college placement doesn’t help anyone.
In our case, and I’m sure others are in different circumstances, the AP classes are the most rigorous (or challenging, or “hard”) class options available to our D (from regular class, honors class, or AP class). For her it is the only option available for her to take advanced math classes. Frankly, I don’t care if she takes the standard AP test. I do care that her classes challenge her. A bored mind is not desirable.
The “most demanding” designation is on the school report filled in by the high school counselor, so whatever the counselor’s policy on that is what matters. How much it depends on AP courses depends on the school and the counselor.
Of course, college admission readers may also have their own interpretations of how demanding a schedule an applicant chose, beyond the counselor’s designation on the school report.
So long as their high school is able to provide classes with the advanced material generally provided by the AP classes, that is true. IMSA does not provide AP classes, for example, but teaches all of those subjects as college level. However, AOs may not accept that the non-AP courses that students take at high schools which do not have the reputation of, say, IMSA, will likely not be considered to be as rigorous as AP or IB classes.
Absolutely. Any widely used standardized tests should be administered by a non-profit organization. Moreover, the AP tests should be developed by college professors who teach these courses, and the tests should be based on college finals in the courses that these APs are supposedly matching.
As for things like SATs and ACTs, If colleges want tests which check whether a student has the knowledge and the academic skills required to succeed in college, they need to develop a test for which cramming for three months won’t provide a far higher score than than 10 years of hard classroom work. Basically - a student who has not put in hard work for 10 years should not be able to get a high score because they took a course aimed at teaching them how to take the SAT/ACT. The SAT and ACTs should test what knowledge and skills students have acquired and retained in school, not how well they studied the SAT/ACT prep material.
Which is why AP scores shouldn’t be used for admissions. However, the AP scores will still be required for the college credit and prerequisite fulfillment, since otherwise the college cannot be certain that the student has actually mastered the material, since colleges really do not have the time or funding to check the grading standards of every highschool out there.
Yes and no.
For a student to take 8 AP classes, or 16 credits (assuming 1 class/semester = 1 credit), out of 48 credits or more isn’t all that much. On the other hand, as has been said multiple time, taking 15 or more APs won’t really enhance an admission profile, compared to a student with 10 APs.
Students shouldn’t be taking 15-20 APs just to have more APs on their transcript than their classmates. If they are interested in those particular classes, or they find non-AP classes to be boring, though, that’s a different story.
I think this is what it comes down to on courses. Advanced students don’t need an “AP” label. But they do need challenging coursework that allows them to be challenged and to learn (for many students, AP courses still don’t meet this need. My D didn’t lose a single point on any AP Calc homework, quiz, test, etc. the entire year. We’ve found alternative learning sources.).
AP courses allow schools to teach advanced material to a small cohort of students without the challenge of creating the entire course by themselves. In lieu of AP material, they might just not offer it. My school’s answer to why they don’t teach beyond BC Calc is “too much work, not enough students, no teachers to teach it” would apply to other areas in lieu of AP courses.
AP exams are a different question. While these courses provide advanced work, they are not “college-level courses” for everyone. In discussions with my older D’s former HS classmates, their AP Calc BC and Physics C courses prepared them for, but were in no way a replacement for, similar Freshman engineering classes at MIT/CMU/VT/Purdue. Most of them, all top 10% students at a top 20% high school, took the Freshman classes, some got As, some got Bs, no one said it was simple and repetitive.
Feel free to take the AP exams - it at least gives you options. But IMHO it doesn’t show you’ve “passed a College course”, it only shows you’ve passed a high school AP course. Take the GenEd credits, and maybe the decision is different at different types of schools. But think long and hard before placing out of the notoriously challenging Freshman STEM courses that are fundamental to subsequent courses if a STEM major.