I did ask the Head of College Admissions Counselling at kids current BS, but they weren’t very helpful. Their knowledge about the implications of not having APs for International Applications was based solely on what was posted on various universities websites as admissions requirements and they cited several specific BSs who have already made the same decision as it seems to work out for Andover… They apparently hadn’t actually spoken to any international university admissions people - which I found shocking. That is partly why I posted here as I know that there are families who have had a lot more experience that me (and maybe this Admissions Counselor.
That is exactly what I though initially @CateCAParent but… Admissions are done very differently in different universities and even countries and I suspect the lack of recognized tests are going to be an issue to those unfamiliar with the USA system.
Canada, which I have been looking into today, often have huge incoming classes. U of Toronto has an incoming UG class of just under 63,000 in 2017 (can’t successfully google how many applications) and presumably similar in 2023, and they aren’t talking to any individual school about how an individual course with an esoteric course titles map on to APs or similar! They want scores on standardized tests and GPA that they can sort in numerical order and draw a cut-off when a program is full.
I have actually made admissions decisions in the UK as academics do it there rather than admissions staff. The problem is that academics know what skills etc. incoming students need to be successful but don’t spend enough time doing it that they have extensive knowledge about lesser known qualifications never mind individual schools. There are a few USA schools that are truly famous, but I bet that there isn’t more than a handful of UK academics that know where Cate is, and certainly what differentiates it from other schools. St. Andrews and to a lesser extent Warwick might be a special case as they specialize in taking American students
It is going to be interesting to see how all this pans out - BSs tout diversity and how many countries are represented in their graduating class. However, if they make it hard enough they will only be an option for families who want their kids to go to college in the USA. We aren’t the only family who don’t have strong ties in one country. IB, A levels, Abitur, Bacc etc. are looking increasingly attractive.
No/yes/maybe - my kid settled very quickly at her current BS and has made friends and can imagine graduating as a senior from there. She is also being told by older students that college counseling is not very knowledgeable about international applications and she is concerned that the classes are going to move towards inquiry-based learning which she didn’t like in her middle school. She is blowing hot and cold, and the timing is such that she can’t go and look at other schools easily and see whether somewhere else would be a better fit. So, that is the long non-answer to a good question…
So finally, and perhaps I will bow out after this but thanks again for all of the useful suggestions, comments etc.
I have been racing about trying to explore options for HS and college. A private day school where we are currently located has offered her a place for next year and they have plenty of APs and challenging courses to keep her busy so kid has an option. We will start with one binary question and move on from there. Baby steps in the forest until we start to see the trees…
Thanks again
Cheddar
Well done to your daughter! It is hard to get into Oxford as an international applicant. Your daughter’s tutor would have been as interested in the fact that she self-studied as they were in the scores themselves. Oxford tutors seek out kids who want to study their subject and demonstrate that interest by doing something beyond what their school provides. So often people say to me, but they can’t expect my kid to have learned X because their school doesn’t have that course - that is exactly what they look for! The kids in the “chance me” section who are studying 16 different APs are not interesting to the Oxford tutors. They want the kids who take themselves to the library and to read everything on their subject, go out of their way to visit the British Museum every week and try to teach themselves Sanskrit by figuring out inscriptions on statues etc. They are looking for the spiky, self-starting, highly-driven kids who can cope with a huge workload and still look forward to tutes. The fact that your kid thought that it was worth it was the key for success at Oxford.
I hope she has a wonderful time - it really is a special place.
Every year, George School has kids who go to uni overseas and for them, the IB is key. Just suggesting you keep an open mind on that. There ARE ways to do it with a science bent, but they aren’t the easiest.
What about taking the bac for whatever country your child hopes to attend university in? My aunt wanted to study in France so she took the French bac in the 1960’s (she had to travel to the closest major city, possibly Manhattan?) She aced it and attended La Sorbonne.
A lot of good advice on this thread, I’d just add one more thing about AP exams. They’re not all created equal when it comes to being well prepared for them. Some AP exams are definitely “content focused”, by which I mean there is certain content that you just have to know and if your class didn’t teach that content, then you’d have to study on your own to master that. In particular, this would be history and science APs.
But other exams are not nearly as content based – think English Literature, or any foreign language language or literature exams. For instance, the English Lit exam is mostly analyzing passages that they give you, and then you write an essay about any book you want, you don’t have to have read certain books to take the exam. As for calculus, I’ve been told by several math teachers that it makes no difference if you call the class an AP class or not, because the content that they would teach in any calculus class would correlate to the AP Calc exams.
So, in other words, you could easily go to an academically challenging school that doesn’t have AP classes per se, and take at least 4 AP exams without needing to do substantial extra study on your own.
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To the OP: Kiddo’s school offers several AP’s - but a couple less than years ago. There are also many Honors and Accelerated courses. I am telling you this because if you look at a course catalogue from XYZ school and don’t see large numbers of AP’s, this doesn’t mean the school isn’t academically rigorous or competitive for top colleges. They may be charting different levels of courses, so that your kiddo can be placed in Honors or Accelerated. In fact, they may have faculty teaching college level courses (like in theoretical math/physics, P-Chem, electrical engineering, architectural design, advanced robotics, etc) that are not only extremely challenging, but also great prep for specific majors. Look beyond the AP course offerings.
Beware, some AP courses can be GPA suicide. So decide if you really want to go for it. Believe us, most of the frequently mentioned schools on CC will give your kid plenty of academic challenges - hey, but for many of us parents, that’s not the only area of growth BS’s offer.
DM me if you want specific information on Kiddo’s school or on AP courses - also, there are a few BS’s in the US/Canada that offer an IB diploma - we know of one that is popular with foreign students for this very reason.
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I agree with @soxmom. For example, SPS doesn’t offer AP classes but kids take AP Calc, AP Chem, AP Physics, AP Statistics, AP English, and AP [Foreign Language] without extra prep, and score well.
The school profile sent to colleges along with the application states, “All SPS courses are college preparatory. Our highest-level courses are labeled differently by the academic departments as regular, honors, and advanced. (See chart below.) While we do not offer an AP curriculum, many courses are beyond normal secondary-school academics; several use college-level texts and are designed to match undergraduate offerings.”
The college-level courses are then clearly labeled: https://sps.myschoolapp.com/ftpimages/36/download/download_3429314.pdf
A few kids have gone to Oxford, more to St. Andrew’s.
If a kid wants to return to a national university system in their own country, it is likely that there will be a standardized test for doing that. Especially true where uni is free. I think that the OP’s concern comes from this, not whether the curriculum is rigorous. It seems that the system being considered considers AP exams. Who knew?!
I seem to recall that this is one of the reasons George School decided to add the IB program decades ago – they wanted a global community but had to make re-entry into their “home” (affordable) universities more seamless. While you might think, based on CC, that every kid in the world wants to go to college in the U.S., it’s not so. Not even all the ones who went to BS here!
US prep schools were designed to prep kids for US colleges, so that "disconnect " should not come as a surprise.
@CheddarIsBest As others have pointed out, many top boarding schools offer courses that have the rigor of AP courses without being designated as such.
Usually, the AP level courses are 500 level in the course catalog, while 600 level courses are beyond AP. Students who have taken these courses can and do take the AP exams and do well on them.
One way to research how many students are taking AP exams at each school is to look up the BS profile. That will detail how many students of the graduating class sat for how many AP tests and what percentage scored 5’s, 4, 3, 2, 1.
For example, here is the profile for PA which only offers 5 designated AP classes: https://www.andover.edu/files/CCOProfile2019-2020.pdf
ADVANCED PLACEMENT TESTS Phillips Academy (Andover)
168 candidates from the Class of 2020 sat for 645 examinations. The overall distribution of scores is:
5 … 58% 4 … 26.8% 3 … 11.3% 2 … 3.4% 1 … 0.5%
You can view similar stats for Deerfield Academy here:
https://deerfield.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/School_profile_2019-2020Edited.pdf
In the class of 2020, 143 candidates sat for 454 AP exams. 90% of AP exams earned scores of 3 or higher.
Scores of 5 = 36%
Scores of 4 = 31%
Scores of 3 = 23%.
With your unique situation, it might be worth your time to investigate each school you think would be a match for your DD to find the AP testing profile. AP designated courses are getting fewer by the year at private/boarding schools, but it many schools still have students doing well on AP exams.
My $.02 on the value of AP exams and why schools are moving away from them. I remember acutely as an undergrad at an Ivy that the placement afforded from scores of 5 (or 4 in some disciplines) resulted in a very mixed bag of experiences among the students.
Some kids who scored 5 totally hit a wall in college. My assumption was that they’d been taught to the test, drilled hard, etc. but somehow hadn’t really internalized the material. Others hit the ground running.
Point being that AP scores aren’t predictive of what comes next. Not all that different than other standardized tests as has been demonstrated.
At our highly rated LPS, they are all in on the AP train. So much so, that they moved the school calendar up 4 weeks (!!) to provide an extra month to cover AP content before the test. Bummer is, it’s a unified school district, and teachers can’t have different start dates, so the entire district K-12 moved to that start date. So when our youngest was in 2nd grade, she to went back to school the first week of August.
The bummer is all the districts start at different times in our region. And our’s is the very earliest, but 2 - 4 other districts are mid or mid-late August now, and a few are still September. The bigger bummer is that summer camps & summer programs seem unaware of the changes that have occurred the past 3 -5 years, or are slow to respond. So there are several summer classes we can’t do for our kids, because they would miss 1/3 of the class. Or, there are weekly camps, but maybe our kid(s)’ favorite session (most interesting focus/topic) is in a week where they are already back in school! I asked one summer program we have done for years to please move up the start date by at least 2 weeks. I let them know that the two nearest districts their program pulls from are on this new early summer calendar. They had no idea! Thankfully program did move up.
It’s annoying that the AP emphasis in LPS is driving so much else (at least in my neck of the woods).
I applaud the private schools and boarding schools for stepping back from it. Cram, cram. cram is not a good way to educate.
And, from what we heard from the schools we were interested in, by stepping back, the boarding school teachers have room for really strong aspect of curriculum that they would not be able to incorporate if all-in on AP. (because they’d have to stick to AP outline/timeline). These BS teachers are so skilled and so passionate. We are seeking BS for our child child to benefit their full enthusiasm and their unique depth of knowledge for their subject matter; I’d hate to lose some of that expertise at the alter of AP.
I agree with so many saying you can still sit for the AP test and do well.
And SAT subject tests are accepted/important.
For your list, the curriculum guide on NMH has many APs listed: AP Music Theory, AP Lang, AP Lit, Multiple AP history (and Econ), multiple AP art classes, and I think I saw AP calc too (not sure AB, BC or both). The intro to the curriculum guide talks about AP project replacement classes as well (not sure what that is).
For what it’s worth, a year ago, my child was told by several current NMH students at a student/potential student breakout session that the school was for sure dropping their AP Program. But we parents received an info session (at the same time) heavy on highlighting their AP offerings (yeah, you can read between the lines: it wasn’t a good look to have such conflicting info at the same event!). So, I’m surprised to see the 2019-2020 still has a large list of APs in the catalog.
Question on AP Chem & AP Bio - I apologize in advance if this has already been answered!
Do most students take AP Chem and AP Bio at BS without ever having basic courses (regular Chem) first? I hear at our school that AP is one of the toughest courses a student can take. How is AP Bio?
Depends upon the school. At Andover, kids usually have to take the intro bio/chem courses first before taking the advanced course, but there as a select few that bypass the intro. Taking Physics C without a prior physics course is slightly more common. All of which is predicated on math level.
No. Kids have to take chem and bio before Ap. Some do summer session to take Ap chem sophomore year. It’s absurd. Beyond absurd? Wish the school would kill that pathway.
At our school, those (chem and bio) AP classes are the 2nd classes of each for most students. Kinda like the first one was the high school level one and the second the intro college one.
Sort of repeating what a lot of previous commenters have said, but there’s really no reason to worry about AP course offerings at top BSes for international college applications.
Choate offers no AP courses but tonnes of students take the exams. All of my friends are sitting for at least one exam this spring, with most sitting for several. Our courses are generally AP-level+, outside of underclassmen courses like Intro to Lit/Physics 200/Geometry or whatever so there’s not much worrying about extra studying. Personally, I’m sitting for the AP Lang, AP Macro, and AP CSA exams this spring. I don’t feel worried about how I’ll do.
And as for international admissions, almost every top BS will prepare your child in that regard. Choate has info days for only UK/int’l schools, and I know Loomis hosts a big fair dedicated to only UK schools. I know a couple of students who will be attending top-tier international universities and others who haven’t received decisions (afaik) despite our lack of AP offerings.
Just my experience, though. Not every school is the same.
I’m ambivalent about courses specifically taught to AP content, but I would not minimize the practical value of good AP scores. I hope boarding schools - including my children’s alma mater - won’t make it unduly difficult for students to take and do well on AP exams.
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