<p>
Classes that my D takes are legit; my neighnor’s D’s are silly. <j k=“”>.</j></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Define “many.” From what I can tell, the band of top schools doesn’t, and maybe for good reason, but that’s a tiny fraction of all the colleges and universities in this country.</p>
<p>I sat in on the intro bio course at UGA last spring, and thought that if anything it was actually easier than the equivalent AP class. And HS classmates who are now there agree with me. I don’t think that class was so uniquely rigorous, but who knows?</p>
<p>VP - Also keep in mind that College Admissions will not have scores for AP classes taken in the senior year, so they will rely on the 1st semester grade.</p>
<p>I would guess there are more colleges that do (give credit) than don’t or at least use them for placement. I can’t remember what happened with #1, but #2 got check the box for 100 level classes that were on the gened requirements list of acceptable gened classes. It’s nice for him because it will allow him to take a lighter load a couple semesters and still graduate in 4 years if all goes well. No AP credit for him in the major, only as gen ed requirements.</p>
<p>My older son got credit for every AP he took - and that was at Carnegie Mellon not exactly a no name school. That said, he thought the Comp Sci AP was stupid. My husband the biologist has been quite impressed with the AP Bio curriculum.</p>
<p>To find out about how the college board validates the exams, google</p>
<p>“college comparability studies” site:apcentral.collegeboard.com</p>
<p>S recently said AP Stats is the easiest AP you’ll ever take; others have said AP Enviro is the easiest.</p>
<p>OTOH, the “hardest” APs are not so hard if you have teachers who prepare kids well. At our HS, most who take Calc BC get a 5 on the exam; the Euro & US Hist teachers are also noted for over-preparing the kids. Extra readings, research papers, Saturday review classes…It’s hard work, but good prep for college.</p>
<p>I have some familiarity with the program b/c my 4 kids took about 36 APs among them (“about” because Physics is 2 exams and I’m not sure if I counted it as such for each kid who took it) and they all made 5s. The tests ranged from Studio Art to Music to Latin & Spanish, both histories, CS, and all the math/sciences (but not Environmental).</p>
<p>“Hmmm…colorado_mom, guess it depends on the college. S2 had a 4 on AP Spanish Lang and a 5 on IB SL Spanish”</p>
<p>I’ve studied the AP/IB charts from many colleges. For the most part, the top colleges don’t give credit for IB SL courses (there are exceptions). Son got 6 of 7 on SL Spanish and will not get credit at his college. And this is a college with generous AP/IB credits - it looks lilke he will get 26 credits for his HL courses. Some of the colleges he was considering give little or no credit for IB/AP. </p>
<p>I agree that IB is good prep for college. We would have been OK with no credits. Most IB students we’ve talked to over the years say the same thing (if they stick with it for 4 years).</p>
<p>D took AP classes with no expectation of getting college credits. We were happily surprised when her school gave her enough credits to put her a semester ahead.</p>
<p>I think the AP Art classes are in the “legit” category, based on looking through the portfolios and ratings (although there seemed to be some preference for “photographic-type” entries over drawn entries, in one of the assessment categories).</p>
<p>I’ve heard from multiple people that the AP Music Theory exam is extremely difficult and should not be attempted as self-study. What I don’t know is if that is because the pool is biased toward high school musicians who by necessity spend much more time on performance than on “hitting the books”, which would definitely effect studying time and technique.</p>
<p>All I can say is that AP Music theory kicked D’s butt. AP Calculus AB was a breeze.</p>
<p>Ive heard that kids at TJ who’ve taken regular (IE Honors) Physics, routinely take the AP physics exam and do well (what score, I don’t know) without taking AP physics. The consensus being that Honors Physics at TJ is like AP Physics elsewhere in Fairfax County. DD regrets not having taken the AP Physics exam upon completion of honors Physics. AP Physics is reputed to be murder at TJ, but I do not have data on the AP exam scores of students completing AP Physics.</p>
<p>I had suggested DD consider AP Comp Sci instead of either AP Japanese or the post-AP calc course she took but ended up dropping. “thats an EASY AP” It all worked out as she got into a college that I think is a right fit for her, but I think the AP snobbishness was a mistake.</p>
<p>It really is interesting to hear how the AP programs work at different high schools and also how different kids/families feel about AP. </p>
<p>Our school only offers 6. You must be a junior or senior and received an A in your previous years honors class (by subject - so an A in Honors Trig qualifies you to take AP Calc). All of our AP courses are full year and everyone is required to take the test.</p>
<p>Also, our AP courses are weighted the same as the Honors which seems unfair based on the workload.</p>
<p>@Queen’s Mom–how much musical background did your daughter have going into the course? I think for music theory, perhaps more than any other AP, some kids come into the class with a huge preparedness advantage.</p>
<p>@Kajon–Sounds fairly similar to our son’s HS. Students are only allowed to take 6 APs total, 3 in any one year, can’t start until junior year, and face gatekeeping hurdles like the ones you describe. Waivers are available for all these requirements, but they are not given out often or lightly. Our son had a tough sophomore year and was steered away from taking any APs in junior year. If we had fully understood the impact on his admissions prospects, we might have pushed back on that, but he really was struggling and stressed at that time, so we let it pass. Then he took 3 APs senior year and got 5’s on all of them. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>My son’s high school offered just five APs (now just four) in the building, so he had to do eight through the state’s virtual program and elected to sit for the BC Calculus after taking a full year calculus class at a local community college. He got 5s on 11 exams, 4s on the two English exams. His college, the U. of Alabama, took all his APs, so he started with 65 credits. He loved AP because of its variety in subjects – he took BC, stat, bio, chem and physics, but he also loved comparative government and micro and macro economics. He never worried about hard or soft AP. He wanted the challenge that his classes offered. He has said repeatedly that his AP teachers, both online and face-to-face, did outstanding jobs of fine-tuning his time management skills. He also felt more than prepared to take upper-level classes when he got to college.</p>
<p>Are the “lesser” AP’s really legit?
UCAS (the central agency for all university admissions here in the UK) classifies APs into two categories, one of which is definitely considered ‘lesser.’ Under the UCAS points system, an AP score of 3 in a Group A subject is awarded more points than a score of 5 in a Group B subject.</p>
<p>The Tariff Expert Group decided, for the purposes of allocating UCAS Tariff Points, to classify the AP programmes into two groups as shown below:
Group A consists of those subjects which build upon pre-existing knowledge developed in high school and where the level of assessment demand is consequently higher than in the Group B subjects
Group B subjects are characterized as being more akin to survey courses (A type of course that is offered in the first or second year of a four year degree programme that introduces a learner to a broad range of concepts from either a discipline or a field), introducing learners to new subject content and assessed with a lightly lower level of demand than the Group A subjects.
Group A:
Biology
Calculus AB
Calculus BC
Chemistry
Physics (as half courses B and C)
English Literature and Composition
English Language and Composition
French Language
French Literature
German Language
Italian Language and Culture
Latin Literature
Latin: Vergil
Spanish Language
Spanish Literature
European History
United States History
World History</p>
<p>Group B :
Art History
Studio Art (Drawing Portfolio)
Studio Art (2-D Design Portfolio)
Studio Art (3-D Design Portfolio)
Computer Science A (a one-term course)
Computer Science AB (a two-term course)
Environmental Science
Government and Politics: Comparative
Government and Politics: United States
Human Geography
Macroeconomics
Microeconomics
Music Theory
Psychology
Statistics</p>
<p>(I’m not saying UCAS is the font of all knowledge. Just offering its classification as an interesting perspective.)</p>
<p><a href=“I’m%20not%20saying%20UCAS%20is%20the%20font%20of%20all%20knowledge.%20Just%20offering%20its%20classification%20as%20an%20interesting%20perspective.”>quote</a>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>From what I have seen in the sample exams on the AP website, for the exams I know anything about, this is pretty much my evaluation as well.</p>
<p>Except I found Calc AB relatively simple, but I have a couple technical degrees.</p>
<p>AP Environmental is said to be one of the easiest AP classes, but the way it’s taught at my D’s high school, it’s a very tough course. It’s a full year course for a period and a half every day, so kids either have to take it as an “early bird” class or give up half their lunch or, if they have one, study hall. (Most other APs are just a regular class period). It’s also lab intensive, and there are multiple weekend field-trip/environmental work hours requirements. It’s one of the more difficult A’s in the school. The kids who take this course do very well on the AP exam, so maybe the exam is easier than others, but no one at this school would say that AP Environmental is an easy or “lesser” course. Although the AP courses have somewhat standardized course content, and are taught to a test, I think that how difficult they are and how much kids get out of them is dependent in large part on the school and the teacher.</p>
<p>Enviro is in reality just a subset of Bio; nowadays, the AP Bio test nearly always contains an enviro-related essay. Thus, a student with a strong background in bio can self-study Enviro. It is also a good science to double with AP Bio. But if the HS Enviro course has a lot of required, but non-academic outside work (“field-trip/environmental work hours”), that could be quite a load.</p>