How do high school freshman usually do in AP World History as their first AP Class ever?
I would not take this as a freshman.
No one in my family took AP world history. One daughter did take AP European history. It was a LOT of reading. I do not think that it was quite an hour per night every night, but it was definitely a LOT. You need very good retention of a lot of detailed facts, in addition to understanding why things happened they way that they did. She took it as a senior, thought it was a lot of work, and got burned out enough on the course that she skipped the AP test (the only consequence was that she did not get AP credit for it when she showed up at university).
I don’t think I’ve seen scores reported by grade.
APWorld is one of the AP course aimed at younger students. 81% of students were sophomores with freshmen being the next highest group, though only 9 percent. Only Human Geo skews younger.
It does have the third lowest percentage of 5’s among subject courses, just behind Physics 1, which also skews younger. And the fifth lowest of 4’s and 5’s. Being younger almost certainly means a lower score, on average.
It’s a very common first AP class, through usually as a Sophomore. Have you finished your school’s normal history sequence and this is the next option? If not, I’d follow the normal sequence.
At my school, standard, honors, and AP World history are offered to freshman. The prerequisite is 8th grade social studies. While I am not sure about the workload and the cumulative test, I think the AP class would be really interesting and look good for colleges.
If you like history, I say go for it. My son took it as a sophomore and got college credit for it which is allowing him to take other classes in college. It is a lot of work but if you like history it shouldn’t be a problem.
If it’s your school’s standard advanced history curriculum, then it would make sense to take if you’ve been very successful at both previous social studies/history classes and courses in general.
It’s a good first AP course to take.