<p>Are the AP courses that are provided in High School harder than actual college courses? Or are they a true measure of what a college course is like? Thanks for your help!</p>
<p>The difficulty depends on how the instructor runs the class - you can expect anything ranging from easier to equivalent to harder. Note that grading in college is oftentimes determined relative to your peers - so if you plan to go to a “reach” school it might be quite difficult. In terms of class experience though it’s a bit different - in college classes the majority (if not all) of your grade is going to depend on a few tests, and homework usually isn’t a big factor at all.</p>
<p>Ive taken both and I personally found the college course much easier, I took an English college course and I took an AP, psychology course. In English I mainly wrote papers and listen to my professor talk about his favorite points in literature… In psych my grades mostly came from difficult test and loads of homework.</p>
<p>Thank you both for your help!</p>
<p>i think ap courses aren easier because from what i have heard, so really my advice has no merit because i have only taken ap and not college courses, in colleges professors usually don’t tend to stop in the middle of a lecture if you completely do not understand. But i heard the work load is less, but way more difficult.</p>
<p>D’s experience at her school was that AP courses were comparable to what she’s experienced in college. However, her school has very strict requirements for taking an AP course, and will drop you down to the Honors course if you don’t maintain an A or B average. Everyone is required to take the AP exam and the average pass rate is 87%. The classes move at a fast pace since the kids are highly qualified, and students have a lot of supplemental work. In some other schools near us, the AP courses have few if any requirements, so they can’t always be taught at such an accelerated pace. The exams aren’t required, but those students who do take the exam pass at less than a 50% rate. So it definitely varies by school, and even by course in a school.</p>
<p>Graduated here.</p>
<p>I found AP courses to be more challenging for me because they met every day. That means that you could get an assignment that is due in less than 24 hours from when you get it. That’s not the case with college courses. While you’re still balancing the same classes, you get to look at that assignment for at least 48 hours (this year for me it’s a week!) before you turn it back in. The work for a gen-ed class is usually as difficult as AP work, but you have longer time to do it.</p>
<p>Your welcome! but then again I was a high school sophmore when I took AP psych. and now Im a current senior in high school taking a dual credit English 101 course at a local college in our city, so it could be that I found AP harder than my English course because I was younger then who knows… (:</p>
<p>It depends on the high school, college, and instructors at each.</p>
<p>However, many AP courses are often easier because high schools commonly take a whole year to cover what is ordinarily covered in a semester long college course. Examples include calculus AB, statistics, and psychology.</p>
<p>“many AP courses are often easier because high schools commonly take a whole year to cover what is ordinarily covered in a semester long college course.”</p>
<p>But most college students are only enrolled in 4-5 classes per semester. In many high schools, students would be taking 8 year-long classes, or, equivalently, 4 classes on a semester system, similar to a college schedule. I’ve seen on here that there are high schools which only have 6 classes per year, but I think 8, or at least 7, is more common.</p>
<p>Schools, teachers, and classes are going to vary, in both colleges and high schools. At top schools, I think students who place out of classes with AP credit often struggle in the higher level classes. Some students who choose not to place out say that it was worth retaking the material. I think many of the AP classes really aren’t on the same level as the college classes they are meant to replace, at least for highly selective colleges which have a very talented student body, but might be comparable or a little harder than community college classes. But evaluating all this is also complicated by the fact that college freshmen don’t usually have as well-developed study habits, writing, and test-taking skills as the older students do. It just takes a little while to get used to college expectations.</p>
<p>I have only taken one college course, so it’s hard for me to know personally, but I do know that Dartmouth is no longer accepting AP credit after finding that 90% of incoming students who scored 5 on psychology failed the college’s own final exam.
Link: <a href=“Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test - The New York Times”>Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test - The New York Times;