But poster #17 was talking about how much money he/she saved on paying for AP test dollars. I’m just suggesting AP classes may be at a Public or Private is more affordable. I saw the sticker price. It can be near $60,000. You are also the one that suggested BS’s teaching AP courses was a waste of money. I’m not sure BS’s are affordable to everyone
My comment about saving the cost of AP testing was mostly facetious (though that would add up to a really nice night out). Even if the cost isn’t a concern, everyone must deal with the limited resource of time. And we’ve arrived at the conclusion that AP testing is a waste of our son’s time, given that it is not aligned with his school’s curriculum and the other factors I mentioned.
As far as what BS costs, I dont see the relevance to this discussion. Are you suggesting folks should save the money from BS, send their kids to LPS and just pay for AP tests?
“I’m not sure BSs are affordable to everyone”. Agree, but again, what is the relevance? The OP initiated a discussion about AP courses in a BS forum?
I think a lot of posters reply to threads from the “Latest Posts” link without realizing they are responding in the Prep School forum to conversations regarding boarding schools.
However, many colleges that do not allow credit that can be used to graduate early do allow AP scores for advanced placement and/or subject credit. This can allow the student to take additional electives or more advanced courses that may be more unique to college, rather than wasting college time and tuition repeating frosh level material learned in high school. I.e. the student can get more of college X’s distinctive education if s/he can skip the common frosh level courses found at most colleges.
@Nicki20 you bring up an important point. For many students, especially those (like from my neck of the woods) who attended a public high school, AP courses affords them the opportunity to take a college level course (or something akin to it). It’s not just about getting the credits or a high score on the AP Exam. So, maybe they didn’t get a 5 on the exam and won’t get credit - but they learned more than they would have in a regular class. We felt it was one additional way to help students prepare for college level learning and the amount of work expected. The teachers of the AP courses must have a certain level of certification to teach those courses, so I also believe this is an advantage - particularly at a large high school.
@ChoatieMom, Although I normally defer to your greater wisdom, in this case I think you are mistaken. At Mercersburg, the AP classes are among the most rigorous routinely available in most departments, and I’m pretty sure the same is true of a number of well-regarded schools (at least it was 5 years ago, when we were looking). For most people, that would not be a valid reason to avoid a school, because few high school students actually need more than introductory college-level classes. Only the largest schools are likely to have a substantial cohort of students in this category. Most boarding schools (Mercersburg included) go past AP level in math and accommodate advanced students’ needs on an individual basis in other subjects. Also, I don’t see why a well-taught AP course at a boarding school would be less engaging than a similar course without the AP label.
@calimex, She is at Penn. I looked it up and they do give actual credit for certain AP scores, so she received credit for math and French and was able to waive Econ. This may not seem like a big deal, but it might keep her from ever having to take 7 classes at a time.
@twinsmama: We can agree to disagree, and our children chose their schools for varying reasons. In our case, one of those reasons was to avoid the AP rat race at all costs, and Choate was vocal about their stance on what we mutually agree is a substandard curriculum. If APs were the best Choate had to offer, we would have run in the other direction. Well-taught APs are available anywhere in the U.S, even in AZ. That is not what our son was looking for in a boarding school. If anyone chooses a BS whose AP curriculum is the best they have to offer, they are looking for or valuing something other than what we value or were looking to escape by allowing our child to go to BS.
I only have experience with one high school. At Choate, AP courses were absolutely not the most rigorous available and were not taught by the best teachers. If they were, BS would have offered nothing better than our local LPS, and we would have opted to have our son home for an additional four years at much less cost. Please note, that CK DID sit for AP exams; I am not arguing that there could be some benefit to AP scores at some colleges, just that the AP courses are a waste of BS time, talent, and money at Choate. Choate agrees with that and no longer offers an AP curriculum. Anyone who values AP courses and teaching methodology will not find a good match at Choate. We chose a school whose regular curriculum and academic mission far exceeded what he could have gotten from AP courses at home. Not every family is looking for the same thing out of BS.
I wish I had written the above post differently and apologize for what I hear as a harsh tone. I didn’t mean it to come across that way, @twinsmama. Our kids got fine educations at their respective schools and have gotten where they wanted to go. That’s all that matters.
I no longer have a horse in this race and should have stopped upthread. Again, my apologies to anyone who was offended by my unintended tone.
NP @ChoatieMom I am appreciative of a strongly help opinion. It gives me more to think about than the typical CC “it depends” response. ?
A course labelled as AP need only contain the content needed for the exam, not limit itself to it.
All too often, though,“it depends” isthe only answer for the situation. Many users think that all questions have only one correct answer, where the reality is often different.
Actually, @ChoatieMom, I somewhat agree with you in principle, but when I (in the past) expressed those sentiments to my kids, they scoffed at me. 
And I certainly wasn’t offended. I love a good argument!
I remain firmly in the “it depends” camp.
But I thought that the IB coordinator at our school presented some pretty compelling benefits to participating in that program beyond your school (and to that extent, has some similarities to AP). (Note that the IB is quite different from the AP in that there are a number of assessments throughout the year, including papers and oral presentations, that factor into the grade – not just a few hour test at the end of the year.) With that said, he made the point that having top educators from around the world reviewing and assessing what constituted excellence in a curriculum for global students generally resulted in a better curriculum than leaving the decision up to the teachers in a department at a single school. He further commented that the biases of a teacher – be they toward the content or toward the students – tend to be minimized/eliminated and that having outside evaluations brings objectivity and integrity to the process. I DO think that part of it can be scary for some teachers and students. To me, it felt brave to say “We’re going to prepare our students to be evaluated by someone anywhere else in the world with the expectation that they’ll do well in that evaluation”,
And while I appreciate several of the arguments that have been put forward, there need not be an arms race for APs. Our school didn’t weight and didn’t rank – every student was expected to push themselves as much as a they could in whatever way seemed right for them – and that really looked different for different kids. The schools can do a lot to manage whether kids are taking classes to “compete” or to learn.
To say that we don’t want our kids to have AP classes because they could take them at the LPS completely misses the point of why we send our kids to BS … Even if the kids are working toward mastery of the same material (and hopefully, in some of the subjects like calculus and science, they are!), the classroom experience is likely to be very different. As is the residential experience.
So to the OP, whether a school does or does not offer AP classes, I think what you really need to do is listen to each school’s rationale for how they have designed their curriculum and what the intention behind that is. For me, the comments above about the IB felt really authentic to our school’s mission and ethic.
Hmm, I didn’t realize they had as much value as they seem to at some colleges. Not repeating low level courses could be a small plus. But being able to graduate early is a definite plus if you plan to attend a graduate program. I thought this had been eliminated. Some of my academic friends have spoken about rules regarding spending 8 semesters. Anyone else heard of this?
The cost of education is so exorbitant that it could be a good option for many esp full paying families with multiple kids who want to pay for sons/ daughters to graduate without debt.
I’m going to dig further.
There will rarely be issues with publics with graduating early. For privates, it depends on the college. As examples: Brown has an 8 semester graduation requirement with limited possibility for waivers. Harvard charges for course overload if those courses are used to graduate in fewer than 8 semesters
This can be a big plus for those not graduating early. Every unnecessary repeat of a low level course that is avoided effectively adds a free elective that the student can take, allowing the student to experience more of what may be unique to the college (as opposed to low level courses commonly found at high schools and community colleges).
Taking an approved AP course and passing an AP exam are two quite different things, although the second usually follows the first.
Taking an approved AP course, and doing well, mostly impact on college admission. They want to see rigorous class standard, and AP gives that. This doesn’t mean that AP courses are the best. Some schools have advanced courses beyond AP level, such as post AP level organic chemistry or advanced mathematics with multi-variable calculus as prerequisite. Some schools offer none AP but equivalent or even more rigorous courses of their own, which could “trash”, although I think the choice of word is too strong, AP courses if their resources allowed them to offer something better and colleges know it.
AP exam credit is a very different thing. Usually it doesn’t matter where you took the course, or didn’t take any course at all. Collegeboard is not a government branch. While it is still a not-for-profit organization, it does make good profit and pays good, if not excessive. compensation to its officers. College level courses are not of equal rigor and general consensus seems that AP credit lies in the low spectrum of them. Therefore, it is only natural that colleges with higher rigor are less likely to accept it, although some public schools are exceptions - such as upper tier UC campuses.
Some people believe that AP courses and credits are of higher value than they actually are, and arguing that they are not is not exactly “trashing” them.
While rigor of AP exam is standardized, AP courses are not so much. Average AP exam score for students who aced the same subject AP courses seems to vary significantly between high schools that the courses were offered.
My daughter’s school, Grier, does not offer AP English Language, and either standard or honors English for their own grade is mandatory until 11th grade. Still, she says their 11th grade Honors English course is considered as the most rigorous course of the school by many students.