<p>I don't understand making an even easier computer one. I find this sort of depressing that they did away with AB and now are making one below A. I'm also sorry to not see more math ones (MVC, Linear Algebra, or DiffEq) listed among the new ones. I would think that these would be more practical. </p>
<p>Anatomy would have been nice, though.</p>
<p>In addition to the STEM ones mentioned, I believe Accounting is also in the works.</p>
<p>This AP CS Principles actually sounds like a good high school level overview of computer science. Like other subjects such as AP Statistics and AP Human Geography, its actual effect may include some benefit in inducing high schools to offer a useful course, but also increase the misleading of high school students into believing that “college level” work is like that. Yes, it is pretty sad that high schools need the incentive of an “AP” label to offer useful and interesting high school level courses.</p>
<p>In an actual university, a course like that would be a non-majors’ course intended to give a general overview, not a stepping stone to majoring in the subject.</p>
<p>I agree. They had the right general idea, but aren’t going about it the right way. Easier and easier AP classes will make more and more people take AP, thus giving high achievers even less opportunity to stand out.</p>
<p>A cynical person might also think colleges will use this as a way to raise scoring guidelines, meaning fewer people will get credit for their scores, and more freshman in their intro classes.</p>
<p>Engineering: Yes. Don’t make it an extremely general survey course, make it legitimate with advanced math involved, i.e. circuits, statics.
Energy: wat
Environment: APES is good enough.
Anatomy: Why not?
CS Principles: Another nearly-worthless exam in the same vein as Psych, Stats, Human Geo, etc. CS A is already watered down enough anyway. </p>
<p>College Board I am disappoint. Give us optics/thermo/modern physics, MV calc/linalg/diffeq already q.q</p>
<p>Most students attend in-state public universities; the economics is such that these universities want to be as generous as possible with AP credit, because each in-state student or course taken at the university carries the need for an in-state subsidy. An in-state student who skips a course (or graduates earlier than otherwise) due to AP credit uses less of the in-state subsidy money.</p>
<p>I was refFering mainly to top schools, many of which are private and already had pretty steep requirements for AP scores, I should have been more clear about that.</p>
<p>The really elite schools’ freshman courses may be much more rigorous than the usual AP courses and tests (e.g. freshman calculus with lots of proofs and theory), so it is understandable that the use of AP credit may be limited at such schools.</p>
<p>A friend of mine went to MIT two years ago. He had 5’s on Calculus BC and Biology (and A’s in the HS classes), but for reasons unknown to me he re-took SV calculus at MIT. MIT doesn’t accept the AP Biology credit anyway, so he re-took intro biology as well. Although MIT says that their classes are far more rigorous than the AP level equivalents, and in most cases this is true, he went to a very competitive math-science HS and said his calculus class was 100% review (he was really disappointed with himself for not using his AP credit for that). He also said biology was a joke although it did cover a few topics he had not covered in class. Of course, this might have been just because he is a strong student, but then again so is everyone at MIT. Even at elite colleges, their intro courses are often not actually much different than equivalent AP classes at some elite HS.</p>
<p>The solution, of course, is for these colleges to have placement tests instead of using AP scores (which may not give enough information on knowledge depth even with a 5). I believe MIT already does this.</p>