It is not common here to take that many APs. Our HS students take 6. My colleagues at work (all live nearby and have kids in other districts) have children who do not take 10+ AP classes.
It never occurred to me to question this policy, as it seems to work.
Now fast forward two years. If the kids go to a competitive college, the kids that come in less rigorously prepared in HS would have a harder time competing with kids who have seen this material in HS right? Then college will feel stressful. It doesnāt need to be this way.
Our HS students did not experience this. They were very prepared coming out of HS.
My S23 had several post-AP courses in a general purpose public high school (i.e. not magnet, the school accepts anyone in the district and is the only HS in the district, serving all levels of students) this last year: Multivariable Calc/Linear Algebra, Organic Chemistry and Advanced Data Systems and Algorithms. All the foreign languages have post-AP offerings too. As @neela1 has noted previously, weāre lucky to be in highly rated public high school, but all it took was living in the right towns. I know of several neighboring public school districts in other towns that do the same.
And these districts also have students in courses several levels below this for the comparable grade year, so its not self-selecting ā they take all types and offer a lot of course levels. Though in our district, there is some rumblings that the district should redirect resources away from the top level students and devote them disproportionate to the struggling students instead.
Iād be interested to know if their students go ahead and sit for the AP exam and if so, do they pass it?
We already know the huge disconnect between taking an AP class receiving an āAā but then not getting a great score on the actual exam. A great class grade doesnāt mean anything if you canāt perform on the exam.
This doesnāt have have to be the case and are excellent teachers do a great job. However this is mainly the reason Hon Pre Calc is harder. The teacher tests them on very complex problems and test are often only a couple of problems and they still run out of time. In AP, even though the content teaching is still excellent, they follow the AP rubric for testing and grading.
Iām aware of students in a number of districts that moved away from APs for what they deemed comparable to better rigor courses and many of their kids do take the AP tests and perform well. If they didnāt, their experiments wouldnāt have lasted long since these tend to be in districts (or at private schools) where the parents are very focused on their kids academic futures.
A lot of students do. To be fair, the motivation isnāt necessarily a question of rigor. You still need the AP score to get out of certain requirements or placing. Some colleges assign registration priority according to the number of completed credits. Occasionally students are hoping to graduate in three years.
Very common where we live (in most districts around us) to offer a lot of AP courses.
Point is, I donāt think broad NE vs South region is a relevant dividing line on what is common practice.
In my HS many years ago, we had zero APs. My wifeās (same age, same region) had many. This was more economically-driven at the time ā she went to a better public school than I did.
The APs at school are far more rigorous than what the curriculum suggests. As, A-s, and occasionally B+s get 5s on the AP exams. Except perhaps on the Chinese AP.
Our HS offers a lot of AP classes as well. I agree north v south is not relevant.
Just a quick google search but thought Iād throw it in here for funā¦
Is 10 APs enough for Ivy League?
For students aiming for the Ivy League and Top 20 schools in the United States, a good target is to take (and pass) 10-14 AP classes throughout your high school career ā or 3-4 each year.Jun 6, 2023
To give an example, our private HS has no AP natural sciences classes (they do offer AP Comp Sci and both Calc APs).
But they also claim that, say, Advanced Biology is actually equivalent to a 200-level college Biology course. Which is implicitly claiming it is more advanced than AP Biology.
But they do not encourage those students to take the AP Bio exam. They can, but they will probably have to self -study, because Advanced Biology does not purport to teach to the AP Bio exam.
This all makes sense because Bio is a broad field. Indeed, a local highly-regarded university strong in STEM really has a molecular biology focus, and they donāt give AP credit for their standard introductory Biology course unless you take an additional placement exam on top of the AP exam.
Anyway, thatās one example of how some high schools see all this. From our HSās perspective, a course can be both more advanced than an AP course but also not really prep you for the AP test, because many fields of study are not linear like that.
Indeed, we offer the Calcs, some Languages, and Comp Sci, and that is it. And that is explainable by those being more linear fields (and even Comp Sci is arguably borderline).
Source? There are a ton of sites offering sometimes unsubstantiated advice on the Ivy League. (usually with some service to sell).
To be clear, I suspect that number may be correct in districts that offer tons of APs, but most districts donāt (the national average of AP offerings is 8 per school). I doubt any actual Ivy League AO would publicly agree with that statement.
The quote is from Crimson Education, a consulting group.
You do know that private consultants are not always the font of all knowledge about college admissions, right??
So to my post at the top of the thread, add private consultants and tiger parents to the groups whose mindset needs to shift.
As I said. Quick and dirty google search. But even as I kept searching the number of APs that students have applying to any of the top colleges is very high. Most were 8-10.
As you kept searching where???
Because the students who post here or on Reddit are not a statistical subset of college-bound students - even those heading to HYPSM.
This is also a very interesting definition. Thanks!
Garbage in = garbage out?
In our private HS, there are only a few AP classes, most of the top students only take 2 or maybe 3, and we place a lot of students in the Ivy League colleges (and even more in Ivy equivalents).
So, yes, it is all contextual.