Situation: AP Psych passed with a 5. All of the college sites for his school indicate this score will give student 4 credits for psych xxx. But when student gets to college and is meeting with advisor, this psych xxx class also has a lab. So the college will not accept his AP credit as complete since he never had a psych lab in high school. He can only use it as a 4cr elective. So he will now need to take another class with a lab to make up for his AP psych class. He’s not a psych major and is already limited in his open classes due to his majors. Anyone else ever have an AP class denied over lack of Lab?? He can’t just take the lab either. Thanks.
Does he need Psychology xxx for his major or other requirements, or as a prerequisite for some other course?
I.e. is the subject credit important?
What college?
Requiring a lab is not an unusual thing. Student should find a lab class that interests him or her and take it. I’m not sure why this is at all “controversial.” Student is still getting a credit for the AP class.
Psychology is not needed for major; it’s a distributive /gen ed requirement. It is not required for another course.If lab classes were similar to his major and interests, maybe taking another would be acceptable. He’s already taken a lab class. But not being a student in the science field, they are not really of interest to him. He would rather use his credit “elective” (Psychology) in an area r/t his major or of interest.
I am always the Debbie Downer on CC w/r/t AP credits (and have gotten some nasty blowback) but this post is a good example of caveat emptor. Not every AP exam or credit is created equal, and colleges retain the right to give or not give credit based on their own assessment of how well an AP class matches up with their own curriculum, rigor, and competencies.
Simply put- an intro psych class without a lab does NOT have the rigor of a college level psych class. That’s reality. Lab work teaches techniques, requires an understanding of the scientific method and statistical analysis, as well as providing a real life example of the concepts that are being taught in the class (i.e. practical applications).
Your son can take a different lab science, no???
If they won’t let him use the AP credit for the general education requirement, then he could take some other course of interest that fulfills that general education requirement* so that he can learn something new instead mostly uselessly repeating what he has already had.
*If it is a science requirement, it is likely that courses like physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. would fulfill it. If it is a social science requirement, it is likely that courses like economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, history, etc. would fulfill it.
Blossom-thanks for an explanation on the lab component.Helpful. We would just have expected the college to be clear about the lab component in their statements about credit given with AP classes. Feel a bit “lead down the garden path”. It would be nice to see a disclaimer on the AP credit (Ie-lab expectations) other than “distributive credit will be given with a score of such an such”. He would enjoy the soc area but unfortunately it is under the science track. He’s taken one with a lab already with little enjoyment. Thanks for kind input
I think it’s your HS which has dropped the ball. Maybe reach out to the curriculum coordinator in the Superintendent’s office in your district to let them know that their AP class does not match a college introductory psych class?
And those techniques provide some foundation for required lab courses in other sciences as well.
One case which underscores this was when I found when an older college classmate ended up struggling through an introductory CS course for non-majors widely considered a joke* even by most non-STEM majors partially because his private boarding school allowed him to graduate with taking only 2 years worth of science classes without lab. Oy.
- The most difficult part of this CS course for non-majors did have some programming content....but only the equivalent of the first 3 weeks of the very first course in the intro CS course sequence for majors/minors.
The school IS giving him 4 credits, just not a lab credit and he can’t check off a core requirement that contains a lab if he didn’t take a lab class. AP Psych is not a science class, it is a humanities class at most schools.
My daughter has to take 6 credits of science as core classes. Psych (AP or taken at the college) doesn’t meet that requirement but if she’d taken AP psych, she’d get 3-4 credits of general ed. Most of the science classes offered to meet this requirement are 4 credits because they require a lab, so it is almost impossible to meet the requirement with just 6 credits. DD will have 8 credits in science, the least science-oriented college student in america.
Back in my day, we had to have two 2-course combos to meet the science requirement, like Bio 101 and 102. You could use Psych 101, but then you had to take Bio-psychology as the second course as it was all about the science of psychology. It was very hard for us non-science type students.
AP Psych is usually a Social Sciences class for the purposes of assigning credit at the college level. So NOT a humanities class like lit or history- comparable to econ or anthropology. I took anthropology in college and it had a lab- which I hated- measuring primate skulls and learning the field techniques which anthropologists need to know to become effective observers.
Don’t you mean social science? I’ve never heard of Psych being considered or described as a Humanities field.
At DD’s school all the social science and humanities are designated as ‘H’ in the core requirements, and I was just looking at the catalog yesterday, so had the ‘H’ on my mind and grouped all the ‘other’ classes into humanities. They have ‘C’ for communications (writing and speaking) which are usually found in English or journalism departments, ‘PN’ which are the hard sciences, and lots of ‘H’ courses, which are all over the rest of the arts and sciences departments.
Psych isn’t in the ‘science’ group, it is an “H”. You can take psych or history or poli sci or art or anthropology and meet the ‘H’ requirement. There is not social science requirement in the core requirements.
This is totally up to the college…and the same goes for dual credit courses.
My one kid had AP courses that could only be used as electives. And she also had a duel credit course…but because it was required in her major…she was required to take it again.
My other kid got 2 semesters of English Literatire credit for a 5 on his AP exam…at a different school.
Really…totally up to,the college.
There are colleges now that aren’t giving any credit for AP courses taken in HS.
At my LAC and many other colleges, Poli-sci and Psych to some extent definitely considered social sciences and there are social science distribution requirements at my LAC*.
The latter is “to some extent” because Psych could also be a hard science depending on what concentration/subfield one focuses on and how one goes about studying/analyzing the topic.
History is one field where it’s a tossup depending on institution and IMO…could be covered under both humanities ans social sciences depending on the area of history and how one goes about analyzing it.
- When I attended, one had to take a minimum of 9 credits(3 regular courses) in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities/arts.
I’m sure most consider psych and poli sci as social sciences. I do. I was just focused on the ‘H’, meeting the ‘h’ requirement, especially since I was just looking at the requirements yesterday when helping my daughter pick classes for next fall so referred to it as humanities in my earlier post. At D’s school, some poli sci classes have an ‘H’ designation while others have a ‘V’, which is a requirement for a state history or government class. You just have to see which classes meet which requirements for the core classes.
At D’s school, if OP’s son wanted credit for the AP Psych course, he’d get it in an ‘H’ category or as general ed credits, not in the ‘PN’ (science w/ lab) category. It sounds like at OP’s son’s college, AP Psych taken with a lab might have satisfied that hard science core requirement. He’ll have to take another class to meet the core requirements for science courses with a lab. Retaking psych probably won’t work since then he may lose the 4 general credits they will grant him as you can’t get credit for the same course twice.
If the college has a lab requirement it would not be reasonable to think that an AP Psych class without a lab component would fulfill that requirement. It seems clear that the college wants students to have at least one college level lab course for reasons laid out by @blossom above. FWIW my D’s college was the same – they would accept AP Psych as a non-lab elective but it would not replace Psych 1 because of the lab component. Honestly, I don’t think you have a valid argument and your S should just take Psych 1 or another lab class in college.
And FWIW, at some colleges now Psychology falls into the science grouping. As a psych major my D took 5 lab classes in psychology and another 5 lab classes in other sciences (physics, chem, bio).
I double checked in case I mispoke. It is under Natural Sciences and the group in which psych is categorized with is biochem, biology, environmental and a health type area. He has taken a college class with a lab under this area already in another section (there are 3 sections-need to pick one class per section and he has done two sections). I guess my real issue is this isn’t the way it is marketed to students.If it is stated in writing the AP class counts in this gen ed area it should count for the entire thing, class/lab, not just the class. It actually should state it will count as an elective not a distributive because that incorporates a lab requirement. Maybe he would have taken env science in high school instead etc. And, now AP psych uses up an elective space (of which he has doesn’t have alot) which could have been used towards major affiliation, and now must taken another science class with lab. I guess we are naive in terms of lab requirements being new to college. If this had been explained beforehand, we would have had understood this practice. His college counselor didn’t realize this either. So maybe we will help them be more informative. Thanks All.
Nowhere does the College Board claim that an AP class will match the introductory class at every single college in the country.
The AP Psych course does not have a lab component in its syllabus. My college’s intro psych class does not have a lab component, and I do not think that it is unique in that respect.
The issue of labs usually comes into play with bio/chem/physics. Some colleges still give the credit for the lab portion. Others require submission of the lab reports for credit review. Still others require the student to take the lab component at the university. At the end of the day, each college is free to determine what credit, if any,it will give for an AP course.
@moorea, what do you want the school to do, give credit when it wasn’t earned?
I think you should tell them that their webpage isn’t clear and explain how you were confused, that your son would have taken a different class in high school (really, you were that focused on what the requirements were to get college credit when you were picking high school classes? My kids were picking what they liked and what would get them out of high school) so they can fix the webpage and make it clear a lab is required.
So what if your son needs to take another lower level science class? He could always take it at community college or a local school in the summer if his schedule is so tight.