<p>Difficulty is kind of a subjective matter so I’ll just give you explain my opinion and you can take that how you will.</p>
<p>Personally, I feel that AP classes were much easier than college courses. One of the main reasons was that in high school, we had homework as a kind of buffer. Even if you crashed and burned on a test, high homework grades could help support your overall grade. College classes, on the other hand, will mainly count exams as your grade. (Though, on that note, other things may count depending on the class, such as essays, quizzes, and some homework, but not to the degree they did in high school.) Therefore, crashing and burning on an exam impacts you much more.</p>
<p>Now, focusing mainly on Calculus, in case that was your subject of interest, I would say that it really depends on your professor in college. Now, before I go further, I’ll just say that I’m kind of coming from a different perspective since I took AP Calculus BC and took Calculus II in college so take this with a pinch of salt.
Anyways, in high school, I was told that AP Calculus BC was more like a full year of calculus in college, as compared to AP Calculus AB, which was a semester of calculus stretched into a full year of high school. I’m not sure if this still applies, but, if it does, then imagine your current curriculum taught at a much faster pace. In this circumstance, I would feel that the AP class was much easier. If this no longer applies, ignore this paragraph.
I would say that calculus in college is comparable to AP Calculus in level of difficulty. For me, it was basically just a review of everything I’d learned in AP class. I actually started with one professor who went super fast with the curriculum before switching to another professor who went at a nicer pace, where I could actually understand what he was lecturing. The faster professor assumed that many students came in with a good background in calculus so that may have contributed to the difficulty in his section. We were graded by exams and weekly quizzes, so the only difference from high school would probably be the lack of graded homework. I’d say then, that, if it’s mainly time that’s the issue with the difficulty of calculus, it might be easier at the college level since theoretically you’ll have more time. If it’s the concepts that are giving you trouble, I’d say it’s about the same.
On a side note though, I do empathize with your struggle in calculus. I struggled with it too during senior year of high school. It is a difficult subject. Though, I stuck it out and I ended up making a 5 on my AP test even if I didn’t make an A in the course, so I’d encourage you to stick it out. You might be surprised what happens.</p>
<p>You also queried about Physics and Chemistry. I didn’t take either of those AP classes so I can only talk about the college level courses. At my university, Physics was split up into Physics I and Physics II and Chemistry was similarly split up into General Chemistry I and General Chemistry II. I’m not sure if this is the case but I’ll just speak about the "I"s in both cases. Physics I was probably comparable to Pre-AP Physics. Same “fun” online homework, thousands of formulas, and interest tests. So, if Physics was hard to you in high school, it will likely still be hard in college. General Chemistry I was fairly easy, I’d say. It goes into much more depth than Pre-AP Chemistry but it’s all fairly understandable.</p>
<p>Whoah! Look at that giant wall of text. Hopefully, I answered your question somewhere in there or explained it well enough. Hope that helps. Sorry for being so long-winded!</p>