Hey there,
For my coming sophomore year, I am taking AP Chemistry upon request. I took all honors last year, and am taking H. Algebra 2 along with the class. I have a month left to get down the basics of chemistry, and I’m extremely nervous knowing how difficult of a class it is. Would the class really be that hard? Especially with knowledge I’ve only taught myself?
By the way, the reason I decided to do this class is because I have a strong “Why not?” mentality.
Upon whose request? If yours, and the school agreed to it, they must think you can handle it.
Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends upon you, and none of us here knows you. However, if all the other kids in the class have had an intro class, then yes, I assume that you will be pulling down the curve for the first couple of months at least.
The class is known for being pretty difficult. Since you haven’t had an intro class, I would suggest getting some AP prep books and skimming the material. A tutor might be a good idea for the first few months, if that is possible.
AP chem is considered one of the “hard” APs. If your school normally requires a year of chemistry prior, you might have some trouble. What is the benefit of skipping chemistry? Also, isn’t algebra2 a pre-req for AP chem?
Have students successfully done this before at your school? I would not recommend it at our school but schools differ, and our school with an 8 class schedule requires a year of prior science before AP, whereas I have the impression that at 6 class schedule schools, it’s more common for students to jump directly into AP. But at schools like that, students have fewer courses to handle and teachers have more instructional time.
It would have been impossible at our school, and it required summer work. It depends on your school and how well prepared you can become on your own. Posters above have asked the right questions… why, whose request, etc.
It really depends on you. People have always said that chemistry is really hard, but in my experience that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You said you have a month to get all the basics down; does that mean you’ve been self-studying? If the self-studying is going well, I would take that as a good sign.
You can’t self teach the content of intro to chemistry in a month or two, especially the labs.
What’s our end goal in skipping chemistry? If you get D 's on our first tests (highly likely) will you be able to drop down to chemistry?
It really depends on your high school and on you.
Our high school does not offer honors chemistry–only offers AP and regular. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the AP class skips the regular chemistry class.
DS asked the teacher what he needed to do to prepare for AP Chem without taking regular. Teacher gave him an old Zumdahl textbook and suggested that he read the first 5 chapters without doing any of the homework. He said that would be more than they cover in a year of regular chemistry. DS did great in AP Chem taken sophomore year with that little bit of preparation, but he is naturally interested in all sciences. He did not find AP Chemistry to be a difficult class and got a 5 on the test with no additional studying beyond taking the class.
My teacher recommended prepcalc or higher for AP chem, and at least some background in chem. I don’t suggest taking it.
I am also taking AP chemistry next year without previous experience with chemistry(a lot of people did that at my school but the new teacher is really good and there is no honors), but I’ll be in pre calc. I personally think that if you’re not that good with math or if you’re not willing to work hard for it the it’ll be hard. However, you should be fine if you study hard yourself and prepare yourself before school starts.
Parent here - my kid was recommended to jump directly into AP Chem next year as a sophomore - they usually recommend about 5 kids per year out of the 60 or so that take the class. The meeting with the AP Chem teacher said that the first few months can be a challenge but by Christmas they usually can’t tell which kids bypassed regular Chem.
She does have a pretty hefty summer packet (as does the entire class). It basically goes over the first 3.5 chapters in their AP Chem textbook.
I went into AP Chem without ever taking a chemistry class in my life. I spent the summer before sophomore year studying the ‘outline’ the AP Chem teacher gave to students who never took chemistry prior to AP (the main topics to learn were stoichiometry, balancing equations, and memorizing a bunch of tables – charges of Ions, solubility rules, strong acids and bases etc).
AP Chem was very doable, provided I put in the work. There were students who took honors chem before AP that assumed they knew AP Chem and ended up failing tests and gettings 1s/2s on the AP exam; there were also students who never took chem before that got 4s and 5s on the AP exam by doing the work.
I can guarantee you that the majority of AP chem will be learned in the classroom and won’t be up to you to learn on your own during the summer. You just need to learn basic topics that AP Chem builds off of.
Have you taken any other honors or AP science classes before? How did they feel?
It’s difficult to answer this without knowing how much free time you have, what your study habits are, how good you are at chemistry, etc. Most people think AP Chemistry is one of the harder AP exams.
How well do you typically do in your science classes? It’s possible that you’ll take a special liking or disliking to chemistry versus other science subjects, but that should still give you a general idea. If you had to stay up all night to study for, say, honors biology, then it probably isn’t a good idea to try AP chem.
I think a good litmus test would be to find some friends who’ve taken the class and ask them how well they did. Then try to guess how you compare to them (this isn’t usually a good habit, but it should present some measuring stick here).
It depends on your high school, mine for example requires chem honors as a prerequisite. This is because there is so much to cover in AP chem that there is just not enough time to go over the basics. I wouldn’t recommend it, AP is a really hard class even when you have a solid foundation