AOs on their website: “we don’t care about AP classes and scores”.
AOs during school visits: “we like to see students take the most challenging courses available”.
As has been pointed out up thread, at many high schools the most challenging courses are AP courses.
Consider the unhooked student from a highly competitive NJ/NYC/NOVA/Bay Area school whose school offers 15+ APs, but chooses to take only 4-5. How will s/he be viewed by these very same selective school AOs?
Also: many of these highly accomplished kids will land at a top public school because not everyone can be accommodated at the elite private schools. There they will earn a lot of AP credits, and many public schools provide course registration priority based on accumulated credits. So these students have a lot of potential upside by taking as many AP courses they can, and a lot of downside by not doing so.
Now, I’m not personally in favor of kids overloading on APs. I wish it were different. It would be nice if they didn’t feel pressured to do so, but that’s the world they compete in.
If College Board was really serious about this, they could implement a simple rule that no student can register for more than three tests per year. It may not stop all kids from taking the class in school if the kid really wanted to but it would stop some, and it would get rid of most of the ridiculous self studying.
Our HS does not allow APs until junior year, and students are not permitted to take more than 3 each year for a total of 6. They actually recommend 2 but will allow 3. Our HS has a huge list of AP classes.
Taking 6 APs total will get the designation of “most rigorous.”
Our HS (and many others I suspect) use AP’s as their top course for a subject. For example, our HS has no Honors (or equivalent) Physics – if you want the more advanced course, your only option is the AP. Similarly, there is no non-AP music theory or psychology or Calculus 3/C courses, among others. Even if students had zero interest in AP credit or weighted GPA, if they were academically ready for and interested in a course that covers more material, they would want to take the AP. So it’s not just about raking up AP stats. The school does have some “post-AP” courses like linear algebra/multivariable calc, organic chemistry and advanced data structures and algorithms that cover more advanced material than the APs, but having taken the AP courses are pre reqs to those.
Also, using UCLA’s stats on GPA, its pretty clear that they do give a significant weight to students who come in with a ton of AP, DE or IB credits. Their average OOS admit would have to have at least 18 full-year courses between 10th-12th grade (honors doesn’t count). So saying there is no advantage after a couple a year is certainly not universally true.
If a student is consistently getting 4’s and 5’s on the tests and doing well in the classes and the material covered, how are they not benefitting regardless of the number they take, even if they have no use for the credits?
Sure, but I was talking statistical averages. Of course there will be all kinds of exceptions or there would be no standard deviation. The point is, UCLA’s stats demonstrate that the majority of the time they take admit students who have taken 18+ AP, DE or IB courses, suggesting they bias toward valuing students who take a lot of those courses. If they gave no weight to students taking more than 2 a year in schools that offers far more, their average should be lower. Unless, of course, one wants to argue that the reason for the high AP/IB/DE stats is that the OOS students who otherwise independently demonstrate their excellence to UCLA a majority of the time also just happened to take a ton of those courses but that it was incidental to their acceptances. But even if you believe that, it wold suggest a very high correlation between the type of student they admit and the type who gravitates toward a lot of those courses at schools where they are available.
I also see from your other post that your kids HS only allowed 6 AP courses. As you note in your post, that would be seen as “most rigorous” in your school profile. Which isn’t really applicable to what UCLA would look for from a school that offered dozens of AP courses without enrollment restriction.
I would love to unpack the definition of rigor more. Why do AP classes = the definition of rigorous. I understand posters are saying that at many schools, the most rigorous classes are the AP classes. The main reasons given seem to be:
The AP classes go into greater depth than other classes
AP classes cover more material than other classes (this is similar to the above quality but not always the same thing).
It is sometimes more difficult to earn an A in an AP class
AP classes sometimes have the heaviest workload.
The strongest students tend to take AP classes.
Does the above list mean that the definition of a rigorous class is heavy workload, difficult to earn an A, and greater depth? Are all of the above things necessary for a class to be rigorous?
What about a class that has a heavy workload and great depth, but because only the strongest students take the class, the vast majority get a high grade?
Or a P/F class with an entry requirement so that only the strongest students take it? Is grading even a required component for rigor?
If I am a teacher and I decide that the average grade in my class is going to be a C (easy enough to design such a syllabus without necessarily making the material any more advanced), does my grading curve automatically make my class rigorous or does it just make me a pretentious jerk?
Or a class with a fairly light daily homework load, but the class discussion is always intensely intellectual and the daily in-class work is thorough and complex?
Or a class that covers the exact same material as another class, but covers it at an accelerated pace --like a math sequence that goes through two years of material in one year or literature class that reads the same books in a semester that another class covers in a year? Just because the class goes fast, does it automatically make it a rigorous class?
I am curious about all of this because while I can’t really put my finger on my definition of rigor, I actually don’t think it necessarily entails all of the above qualities at once (though it usually includes at least some of those items). If I were forced to define a rigorous, I think that it has more to do with the complexity/depth of the subject matter, and a class structure that requires students stretch themselves as learners and peers. But I realize that is a super fuzzy definition. Part of my curiosity is that my two oldest kids have attended private schools with no AP classes. In fact, one of the schools has no honor classes either. Yet, it is clear when I talk to that kid that the lack of AP and honors classes does not mean that she believes all the classes are of equal rigor. The kid claims that just by reputation, she is aware of the most rigorous classes, the ones which require the most grind (I think that means the most homework) and the “harshest” teachers as graders. However, sometimes these are not at all the same classes.
(As I understand it, there are also concerns about college admissions, guidance counselors checking the most rigorous box and advanced standing upon entering college, but I am not that interested in the college admissions factors when I ask about the definition.)
The general idea of this thread still applies at high schools where students have course options of different levels of rigor (however defined by students, parents, and counselors) but where the most rigorous options are something other than AP courses.
In terms of how higher rigor is defined, it could be any combination of the factors you listed.
It’s not possible at the majority of HS’s. But DE is becoming increasingly common and many students supplement that way.
I picked on UCLA because the UCs release way more useful admissions data than most select colleges. UCLA happens to be very weighted-GPA-focused (despite a holistic process), and their weighted GPA for OOS only allows AP/DE/IB (no honors, gifted, accelerated, advanced, etc.), so the result is more visible than most. Perhaps its the extreme example, but hard to say without comparable data from other schools. Still, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that students at schools where lots of APs are offered and allowed as the “most rigorous” option benefit from taking them in admission at highly selective schools. Whether that should be the case or not is a different matter.
Your HS is intentionally level setting by restricting AP quotas. Since students are primarily judged against their immediate peers, this changes the equation for colleges versus students at schools where taking 12+ APs is common.
Yes, but I am still wondering if anyone has a clearer definition of rigor than I do. It took me a full paragraph to describe my fuzzy definition of rigor. I was hoping for a clearer (or at least more concise) one. I like concise though I rarely am. But I suppose the answer to my question is for another thread.
I don’t know why they made this decision, but I do know that our students gain acceptance to many top schools each year.
Our honors classes are taught at a higher level than honors (based on reports from both parents and teachers). Our AP teachers continue teaching and moving forward after exams, as our school doesn’t end until mid/end of June.
A lot of highly regarded schools are moving away from AP courses, or at least have considered it. Plenty of good reasons, some of which you listed. Some feel they can teach better, more rigorous courses by focusing less rigidly on the AP curriculum, and that their students can still do well on the tests if they opt to take them. Some want to limit AP opportunity to discourage the arms race of students taking a lot of them, which again is possible when the school does it as a whole.
While I have not seen data on this, so now moving into the realm of supposition where I could be wildly off, I suspect it is easier for an already highly regarded high school (public or private) with a track record of sending kids to selective colleges to move away from APs than schools without any of those benefits. The majority of the schools I have seen that had a robust AP program then either eliminated or scaled it back, fit into this category. As you note, they have the credibility to offer alternatives that are accepted as comparably or superiorly rigorous. Whereas for schools without proven academic rigor, an AP branded course might lend more perception of rigor, though I suspect that is more or less true depending on the pass rate of the students on the tests.
I suspect admissions officers for the most selective “holistic” colleges would say something like this.
They are really relying on schools, through the school report, teacher/counselor recommendations, and so on, to inform them about what “rigor” means at that school, and who took the most rigorous classes by that school’s standards.
When it comes to comparing rigor between schools, that is an inherently hard thing to do with precision. They may have some idea based on repeat familiarity with some schools, but there are a lot of high schools, things are constantly evolving, and really knowing how to compare all that in detail for all schools is an impossible task.
And that is part of why they think of academic qualifications in terms of fairly broad ranges. That is also why it is generally virtually impossible for a student to get admitted to the most selective colleges just on grades (or grades plus test scores). From their perspective, a lot of people end up with academic records which are more or less “tied” in the sense they are all very good, and knowing for sure how to rank them is not possible.
So, they then “break” those “ties” with other factors. And they do that in part because they think there is only so much meaningful information you can squeeze out of grades, or indeed grades plus test scores. And that in turn is true in part because there isn’t necessarily all that much course/grading standardization between schools.
Again, given all this–we can see long lists of APs as a way for schools to make sure their most competitive students end up in that “tie” with the competitive students from the schools that the most selective colleges already know well enough to not need APs for that purpose. Like, maybe they are not so confident that their school report and counselor/teacher recommendations would be enough for that purpose on their alone. If true, that would help explain why they would want to use AP courses to corroborate their claims about course rigor.
This is not quite the same thing as saying AP courses “define” course rigor. But I think it is reasonable to see AP courses as potentially corroborating HS claims about course rigor. At least enough to get the competitive students at those HSs into the necessary academic “ties” to keep them in the running for highly selective college admissions.
Dual enrollment is not necessarily an indication of rigor. Community college classes tend to be far, far less rigorous than even my high school’s honors classes (9/10 English and 9/10/11 math), let alone AP’s, and the colleges know this. Many of our AP classes are dual enrollment with our flagship state U, limited only because not all of the teachers can become qualified to the level of adjunct college instructors, not because they’re not at the level of flagship U’s classes.
In order to reduce stress on my kid who was taking so many AP’s in 11th, and all AP’s in 12th, I told them to dual enroll those that were possible, expecting that in most cases, credit with a grade on the flagship’s transcript would be as likely to be accepted for credit as an AP score. They didn’t take the AP exam for those APs that were available as dual enrollment, to reduce stress. The good thing is that they have a flagship U college transcript with about a year’s worth of credits, including an English class and a full year of Calc (from Calc BC) on it, which might be usable for med school app - we haven’t figured that out yet. The bad thing is that they a college transcript that shows that they didn’t wind up with an A in the Calc BC on the transcript, since they had to take the final at the flagship after a year that was messed up by Covid (we didn’t go to normal school until the last month of senior year, I think), so it wasn’t the best circumstances in the course/subject that had always been their biggest challenge.
The only way that the AP arms race in college applications would/could be stopped is if colleges go “AP-blind”, and won’t even look at AP designation or AP scores until after acceptance, for those schools that offer credit or higher course placement for those with high AP scores. Of course, the College Board won’t like that - after all, their reason for existence, at this point, is to make money for the College Board, so they won’t like anything that keeps students from registering and paying for AP exams.
I really don’t think our definitions matter. We never paid attention to the number of APs the kids had. The relevant thing (in addition to what the GC checks on the common app ). Is really how effusive the recs are from the GC and the teacher about the kid regarding the rigor in the transcript, and the kids personal academic qualities. So you pretty much have to take the most rigorous classes offered — and sometimes they are not even APs. Our older kid got done with AP CS A in 9th grade.
So he, some of the other kids, and the instructor built out the curriculum for the school for the next two - three years. They’ve enjoyed the time. The college outcomes did not hurt for any of that cohort.
Unfortunately, kids at the vast majority of public high schools have neither option. Hence the (perceived) need to take as many APs as possible to demonstrate rigor.
There can of course be course that are not AP that are more rigorous than AP. And yes rigor is not an objective definition. But you are also coming from the perspective of a parent of kids in what sounds like a great school. Most schools aren’t.
The AP isn’t supposed to me “most rigorous,” it’s supposed to mean “college-equivilent,” which is why the majority of (but far from all) colleges accept (some) AP courses as credited substitutes for their comparable entry courses. Whereas, without the AP (or DE or IB, etc.) a student taking “calculus” at their high school might be wildly unprepared for calc 3 at their college, depending on the quality of the class. As you note, grading and quality of the AP course can be all over the board, but the test equalizes for that. If someone gets a A in their AP Calc AB class but a 2 on the test, no college will give them credit or allow them to skip to the next course (unless in some cases they pass the college’s own placement test).
But I suppose the answer to my question is for another thread.