<p>My D's HS offers AP art to seniors...for those who have completed Drawing and Painting 3. My D can take AP art or instead take an art class in media, photography, fashion or sculpture.</p>
<p>She has not have the opportunity to take any art electives..only the Drawing and Painting sequence in high school.</p>
<p>Additionally, he has taken a pre-college class in fashion desgn and portfolio development at FIT this year. She will be doing an art program during the summer and probably pre-college at Pratt, SVA or Parsons during her junior year.</p>
<p>My question is: how important is AP art senior year? She will probably want to take a pre-college class in the Fall to help her get her portfolio together.</p>
<p>Even though she wants to go to art school, I am sure senior year will be filled with other AP's and with her spring musical (she hopes to get a lead.) I know the AP class is prett intense and often the credit for it is not accepted by many schools. Is it a worthwhile class and is it seen as a negative if she does not choose to take it?</p>
<p>My son took AP Art both junior and in this his senior year. I think AP art is really useful junior year because the requirements force them to do what colleges seem to be looking for in scholarship level portfolios. Specifically, you end up working on a concentration- some cohesive idea that helps you develop a body of work that is a “series”. So if she does it junior year, she will have decent stuff to take with her on NPDs and portfolio reviews in late spring, early fall of senior year.</p>
<p>I dont know of any art schools that accept AP art credit. My son is taking it because he wants to, but frankly I havent figured out any logistical benefit, beyond the obvious taking the best classes available to you at any given time one. Also, his class is pretty much automatically an AP class. It was and is a lot of work.</p>
<p>I would recommend that you call the admissions directors at some of your daughter’s targeted schools and ask their thoughts on AP Art. I have found that as a group these people are very helpful and they are very much on your side.</p>
<p>As long as you are on the phone maybe also ask them if you daughter is on the right path to be admitted. They will say that it will all come down to her portfolio, and that’s largely true, but there are also many non-portfolio things to get right. As parents the only things we can help our kids with are these non-portfolio things.</p>
<p>So I encourage you to call or better still take a visit and ask them to help you.</p>
<p>Best of luck to both you and your daughter,
Wheaty</p>
<p>Our school offers both AP and IB art and we even have students who take both! My S did the IB series which is for two years. He also has never taken any art electives at school. I have to second the other responses…AP and IB courses do seem helpful for getting a kid to organize and work in a focused way on a building skills, “a voice” and a portfolio. However, at least in IB, the real push to build the portfolio started a bit late in Senior year. Thankfully, he took a pre-college class at a local art school in the summer before his senior year so he had a few pieces from the sculpture class during the summer–a little new for him. Also, IB in the fall of senior year suddenly required a lot of work and finished pieces (and he does theatre like your D) that he was able to use some of the pre-college work for his IB requirements in the fall. Late fall was pretty tough–school play, college apps, portfolio build for scholastic and college apps, etc. And, when you think it can’t get any worse, Spring is here with another school play or two, scholarship apps, IB/AP exams…my S looks like hell right now and sleeps only a few hours a night. Soooo looking forward to June.</p>
<p>FAMM, is it weird that I’m relieved that my D2 isn’t the only one sleeping a few hours a night?? </p>
<p>We couldn’t do any pre-college, but D2 has done AP art since sophomore year, and worked hard hard hard…still is, even more so, as she is doing 2 AP art classes as a senior. She produced the bulk of her portfolio in her junior year, so AP Art is absolutely necessary to get that portfolio up to par (in quality AND quantity). To that body of work, D2 included new pieces completed in AP 3D this year, which to me (I am not an artist) just gave her portfolio that much more impact. </p>
<p>I understand that she will get some credit as a college freshman but says, strangely, she doesn’t mind redoing Art History because she wasn’t happy with her teacher.</p>
<p>it depends what your child’s interests are and which schools he is considering</p>
<p>ap really isn’t important unless you really need the guidance. if you already have the skill and would be better off working independently then don’t take it.</p>
<p>and some schools do accept the credit, for example MICA places you into higher courses if you get a 4 or 5 on the APs, whereas some schools like SAIC will let the credit count towards studio electives. but for the most part, AP credits will not usually test you out of anything</p>
<p>i am not in favor of taking the AP courses mostly because they are narrow-minded and do not really tend to encourage much originality. i say go with that multimedia class</p>
<p>my kid did up to junior and passed state art regents exam barely because he did not follow the instruction. Did not want to go to art schools and the dream LAC school flatly said no credit whatso ever for Ap art, had to take 101 class drawing cones and cubes like everyone else.
Only Bard said they’d consider, all other LAC schools we saw won’t take the credit. so it was not that useful for him and the HS studio art teacher being fabulous realist/ spartan = bad match.
when I looked at AP site and checked on high scored works, I am glad didn’t have to go through. So not what he does and oh so much work.
his old classmates are killing themselves now to cover entire reqs, some kid quit Cooper hometest, Randomhouse, etc, otherwise would have tried and opened the doors.
It depends on what kind are offered at your school, what kind of school you want to go. I never thought it helped portfolio building since everything he did in HS are usually get laughed at by art-y mentors from other classes.
It is sad that young kids are judged on something so subjective, like one’s taste. If there is art SAT that everyone (non APkids) could take, say someone could draw perfect realistic cones and cubes would get hight score? or the most creative or outrageous one? there really is no set rulers. Just bunch of biased I-would-rather-lead-young-than-practice-fulltime-not-that-I could-afford-to-do-that-but-anyway-artists, wannabe-s, some clueless trustees, grandpas deciding your kid’s fate.</p>
<p>I don’t know enough about the two courses to judge but it seems to depend very heavily on the teacher. Like everything related to education you can point to bad experiences as well as really good ones and AP/IB art classes are no exception. BandD is right that these classes and the teachers can have good/bad impacts and so be wary …but I would say this could happen in any class–pre-college, summer enrichment, etc…hell, NPD alone can be a real creativity crasher.</p>
<p>Based on my very limited experience with one school, two courses and two teachers: IB seems much less structured in terms of what a student produces but very structured on documenting and researching --thus the sketchbooks full of writing rather than sketches–but this may reflect the teacher’s preference and have little to do with IB curriculum. Ironically, the really loosey-goosey teacher does AP and the quietly semi-authoritative organized teacher does IB. What seems to be good is that neither teacher imposes a style/approach on the kids and there is lots of collaboration and motivation of classmates by the students themselves in and accross the two courses. </p>
<p>My son lucked into IB which was the best fit for him especially the teacher. He needs someone to push him to finish and document his work, reflect on success and failures in pieces and really think hard about why he is doing what he is doing. Some students need to loosen up and be more explorative and imaginative–our AP teacher is wonderful for this type of student. So get your daughter to talk to the teacher in AP and students who are currently taking the course…does it sound like it will be a good place for her and what she wants to do? …maybe even show the teacher her work and then she can tell a bit more from the feedback whether it will be a positive year for her being in that class…let’s face it, it isn’t AP/IB really…it’s the teacher and the classmates that determine whether she will get anything out of it. This is true for so much of their learning experience so why would AP art be any different?</p>
<p>Back to your earlier question, I understand credit notwithstanding, if your kid’s school offers AP Art classes and you are applying to art school or as an art major at a selective school, there would be some question why it wasn’t taken. You can speak to that in the essays (maybe) but there are things to be gotten from the AP class. In the fall, my D worked on pieces that became part of her portfolio ~5 and worked on her RISD homework at times during her AP class.</p>
<p>Summer Precollege programs from the time she was a freshman honed her skills a lot – also provided portfolio pieces, some schools want sketchbook work too as well as finished pieces. In the early fall, try to set up meetings to do portfolio reviews directly with traveling admission reps individually rather than waiting for the Natl Review Day which is a cattle call.</p>
<p>AP
some HSs, it doesn’t work like that, funds are limited only the cream of latte were offered spots, you can’t take art for resume padding purpose. I mean, any arts should never meant for “that”
but hey, what can i do? It became exactly THAT.</p>
<p>D would not take AP art to pad her resume. She wants to be an art major. However, I want to find out if it is worthwhile for her to take in her senior year and whether she will be penalized by admissions if she decided to take another art class (like photography, sculpture or media arts) instead. </p>
<p>Btw, few people in my D’s high school would pad their resume with art or music classes. You can only take AP art if Drawing and Painting has been completed through level 3. No other art or music classes offer AP or honors credit. (Except AP Music theory which is challenging, too.) Actually the kids who pad their resumes DROP art and music because there is no weighting.</p>
<p>is she a junior now? if she is a sophomore now I recommend ap junior year. if she wants to take another class, she can still submit an AP portfolio.</p>
<p>Speaking to art school applications, I doubt most would give credit for AP art because they require a fundamentals year anyway. But I would suggest pinpointing 3 or 4 schools she might be interested in and calling admissions and asking them. Most would give you a definite answer on credit and all will probably tell you it’s all about the portfolio to a large degree, except for Cooper which will tell you it’s all about the hometest. But they may have leanings toward AP classes, haven’t been in that situation with my child as our school didn’t offer AP classes.</p>
<p>I think those pre-college summer courses are excellent preparation. At more than one event I noticed that kids didn’t really have any idea how to put a portfolio together (and these were hs art stars so the high schools aren’t doing a great job with this in general) and were very uncomfortable talking about their work. Took queries as criticisms etc. I think it’s very important for young art students to get used to “talking” about their work and critique situations and those prep courses are very good in that regard.</p>
<p>But I would certainly call up some schools and just run your questions by their admissions people just as a general inquiry, you don’t have to give your or your child’s name.</p>
<p>uskoolfish
I did not mean you, there are some super human do everything AP but still there are more than enough those kind in certain socioeconomic / racial / demographical grouping so in order to get into HYSP whatnot, they do goody goody art. You see them often enough - very technical, very clean, very A+, works that vase and flowers look like what they are, fruits and cloth arranged just so in the way. I don’t know, It makes me sad, maybe reminds me of my own youth. I mean, this is America! You are young and free! why anyone would like seeing bowl of oranges and naked woman over and over again?
I know it contradicts what I said before, do what you like if you really like doing, don’t do it to get into colleges, that’s what I meant.</p>
<p>Excellent advice about Portfolio Day which is insane. You can get an individual review at Cooper at open house, most do individual reviews when you visit if you request them. Much better than Portfolio Day, do the reviews on the tour. And those that accept portfolios if they pass muster at Portfolio Day will also do this during a presentation while on a tour. You’re not going to miss that possibility.</p>