Most high schools do not have the following characteristics that elite high schools have:
Resources to develop their own advanced courses and curricula.
Recognition by colleges that their own advanced courses and curricula are actually high quality.
High schools without the above characteristics will generally prefer to use pre-made courses and curricula, at least when available, as AP is for more advanced level courses (IB is another option).
Which gets back to the point I made earlier in this thread (post #8): how this topic relates to students aiming for the most selective colleges and elite high schools (very overrepresented on these forums) is very different from how it relates to the general high school student population and most high schools.
Maybe not slacker classes, but not every AP is considered equal in rigor (however defined) by many people. Some might ask whether an AP course and exam most commonly taken in 9th grade (human geography) really covers college level material, for example. Also, calculus BC is a superset of calculus AB, so it is normally considered âharderâ, although the score distribution is higher due to student self-selection.
How does the school handle an occasional top-end math student who reaches calculus in 10th grade or earlier, or someone with proficiency to reach AP level foreign language in 10th grade or earlier (heritage speaker who placed into the level below AP level in 9th grade or someone who started the language in a K-6 language immersion program)?
Honestly, I donât have all of those answers. We did have a student in middle school who they bused to the HS for a math class, but I donât know what happened after that. My daughter took 9th grade honors math in middle school (8th grade) but the class was given at the middle school.
My D did have a Spanish speaking student in her AP class, and he actually found the class to be very difficult. Spanish was the primary language spoken in the home.
I will say that our AP teachers do teach beyond the AP curriculum.
AP CS Principles is probably a more useful course than AP CS A for someone who will not be majoring in CS, an adjacent subject, or a subject where at least the basics of writing software is needed.
When I went to high school decades ago, there was a small number of AP courses: English literature (which was the 12th grade honors English course), calculus BC (the natural end point for students on the +1 math track), a few foreign languages (level 4 was the AP level), and about two others. There was no expectation or competitive pressure to try to take all possible.
This thread has been very interesting. When I was in high school I took almost all of the APs that were taught. Every science, history and English, and German. One year I doubled up AP Bio and AP Chem. My mother was also a university professor at a top 100 university so I took some summer school there before my senior year in HS, but the AP credit largely helped me graduate from college in 2.5 years, and I actually changed my major the semester before I graduated mainly because I realized I was close to a double major, and couldnât get the upper level classes to finish in my intended one, but could get the hours on the secondary one. I ended up 3 hours short of the double major, but it certainly wasnât worth paying for another semester of college, and I was able to start law school immediately. So AP credit definitely helped me save significant money on my education.
D24 goes to a very small Catholic college prep high school for girls. By small I mean her graduating class has 70 students. Thereâs a fair number of APs available for such a small school and D has taken many, but while she does fine at science and math it is not her thing, so she opted to take the honors version of the classes. He school weights the honors courses the same as AP, though I donât know how AOs would weight the relative rigor. She took one AP as a sophomore and got a 5, and took 2 as a Junior, and is taking 4-5 next year (English, Gov/Econ, Statistics, Seminar (new to her school this year) and Psych (also new, but they didnât have it listed when she registered and sheâs on the wait list, but she wants to major in Psych so I told her itâs probably better if she took that at her college anyway. I guess I am just very happy that her small school liberally offers an Honors versions of core classes.
Itâs important to recognize that when the majority of parents were in HS, there were far fewer AP options Depending on the years they were in HS, there was one AP English and one AP Studio Art. And many courses, like econ, psych, gov, world history, HG, ES, stats, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, CS, did not come about until the 90âs or this century.
Of course, the fact that many high achieving students will have 8 or more AP classes, doesnât tell us at what point the additional AP classes had not been crucial to the admission.
I remember AP having a recognition for x number of AP classes, and for y number of 5s - and among the top students in our high school there were always a few of those. So some students in the Northeast will also have 8 (or more) classes. I donât think itâs necessarily a regional thing.
Not unusual. Those who only ever spoke the language colloquially, will often be surprised how hard formal instruction can be, despite having superior vocabulary.
I didnât read this thread but this was also the advice at my kids high school that was ranked the top school in our state the year he went there. It is an all honors and AP school. You have to test in and itâs a public school.
We as parents thought this was odd advice but it was more taking the correct Aps that would prepare you for college vs just loading up on AP courses.
For the classes that were not APs, were they honor equivalents to the AP â meaning considered just as advanced, just not AP â or were students encouraged to take easier classes than they might be capable of because they should only do advanced curriculum in a certain quota of subjects regardless of aptitude?
His school is considered a selective enrollment school and have to test in.
They only offer honor classes and Aps so yes itâs not a typical public.
So yes, everything is considered advanced to begin with.
They used to only have junior /seniors take any Aps but the last few years they opened that up a bit. They suggest 4-6. It was more about taking what your interest are or in whatever progressing you in then loading up on classes. I do understand this situation might be unique but that are many of these schools in my state.
If nothing else, conversations like this underscore the lack of standardization in the US secondary school system. And I intentionally meaning going all the way back through âmiddle schoolâ/grades 6-8, because it is actually true that what happens in those grades can then affect where individual students go to high school, what they have been prepared to do early in high school, and so on.
Given that, it is no wonder people like admissions officers struggle to answer questions like âhow many APs should I take?â in a way that is simple, consistent, and satisfying. There canât possibly be a simple, standard answer to a question like that when there is no standard secondary school system.
So falling back on answers like âtake the most rigorous courses you can with a balance of in-depth and broad studiesâ is about the best they can do in terms of generic answers. And the fact those are more just vague guiding principles and not definitive answers to the question of exactly what classes should this individual student take in order to maximize their admissions chances is something we have to live with in an education system without standardization.
I agree but this is why most students are compared to the students at your school /region. The AOs for those schools know these schools inside and out. This is what levels that playing field. My sonâs school was like very high rigor. The AOs know this by the schools report card. Getting a B wasnât a big deal there due to it. So I understand itâs a bit not the norm.
You simply canât compare the top ranked school in your state to the 345 one. Excellent students at both. This to me makes the âpictureâ of the overall student and holistic review even more important.
But as the years go on and increased difficulty getting into âsafetiesâ continues to be spreading a wide net on college selections is important. Everyoneâs kids can, they just need to be paired with the colleges that they will excel in and not the name of the school.
Yes, but any student/parent looking at that admissions data will conclude that they need to be at the median or above. And that continues the cycle.
Looking at the overall AP exams per student in every state (College Board used to release that data), I donât see such a regional pattern. But my anecdote is from my daughterâs friends, all at similarly selective colleges, where few from the Northeast have 11 APs like my daughter.
Same reason that people quoting weighted GPA is meaningless here â there is absolutely no meaningful comparison between one school/district and another.
I think the bottom line here is that there is no applicable generalization that can be made across all schools on whether it is better to take more or fewer APs. If youâre in a district that moderates AP quotas, has viable alternatives to the APs, or simply doesnât offer many APâs or alternatives, fewer works. If you are in a district where APs are the only rigorous option, they offer a ton and all your competitive peers are taking a lot of them, realistically you probably should too if you want to be competitive, unless you have some other hook to compensate for being out of the norm for your school.
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