Hello,
Is there anyone who has taken the CTY AP Chem course in the last 1-3 years?
My son was planning to take their Honors Chem (self-paced) between now and summer, and then take their AP Chem course next year. However, I read a terrible review from 2009 on the parent forum about the CTY AP Chem course (apparently the teacher wasn’t good, discouraged labs, etc).
If there are any recent experiences on this course, please let me know. BTW, we were also wondering whether he should take Honors Chem this year or jump straight to AP Chem (since many do it that way too). Any idea on the overlap between the courses (we just don’t want him to get overly bored with taking AP and not finding a whole lot new).
Thanks!
I would not suggest taking AP Chemistry without the recommended pre-requisite first-year Chemistry class.
Where are there “many” who do this?
Hi there, thanks a ton for validating the pre-req.
By “many” I should’ve clarified that these are older kids in my son’s school (gifted kids online program) who took like 2-3 weeks of chem summer bootcamp and went straight in (typically summer before their 10th). Since I’m not a fan of compressed bootcamps especially during summers when we hope our somewhat academically oriented son just chill and decompress, I was hoping he can take a longer self paced class. BTW, we live in Silicon Valley , so my reference to many was mostly what I hear in my extended friend network :-).
Any insights to the CTY AP Chem would be great. We would want him to have a lab component (since that’s how I learned science growing up decades ago and the frustration of failed experiments had its own non-academic benefits!) Online programs like Thinkwell didn’t have labs so I was thinking CTY. Any further advice would be very helpful!
Regards.
Look into taking AP Chemistry with ChemAdvantage. My homeschooled kids took it with this online provider. There are also hands-on labs integrated into the class. All my kids got 5’s on the AP Chem exam after taking this course.
Science teacher here. My HS (2200 students) has 5 sections of AP Chemistry that are almost entirely populated by Juniors that have not taken regular chemistry before. It works fine but then they are the top 25% or so of the student body and have very good teachers and resources.
Their typical course progression for science looks like this
Mainstream: Physical Science 9th, Biology 10th, Chemistry, Physics, or science elective like BioMed 11th, and science elective 12th
Accelerated/College Prep: AP Environmental 9th, AP Bio 10th, AP Chem 11th, AP Physics or other advanced science like AP computer science 12th.
It is not practical to take regular bio, chem, physics, and then AP bio, chem, physics in a HS career as that would be 6 separate science classes over 4 years and wouldn’t even leave room for any science electives. Many many students go straight into AP science classes without taking the regular classes first. Bright kids can handle it. Especially as juniors and seniors.
I don’t know anything about the online AP course you are talking about. But if you want to do advance online learning don’t limit yourself to just AP offerings. Look at what your local community colleges and 4-year college are offering. You might find a better online college level intro chemistry class locally at one of those places that will still give you the same college credit.
Thank you so very much for the details!
I think I have a path forward with the advice given on this thread. Thanks a lot again!
That was not the norm in our area at all. My D went to a private STEM HS and the progression for the top of the class was H Bio, H chem, H physics, and then AP as a senior. D doubled up and took AP chem and physics C senior year. Her AP courses went way beyond the AP curriculum because students already had a solid foundation so there was no need to review the basics. Still plenty of slots for her to take CS, Organic chem, and engineering courses in HS.
So no AP classes until senior year?
My own daughter took AP Bio as a sophomore without having taken bio before and scored a 4. She took AP Chem as a junior without having taken chem before and scored a 5. She is now a senior in AP physics and doing fine without having taken physics before (she had physical science as a freshman)
She’s a bright kid but ordinary top 10% bright, not off the charts bright. Her friends are mostly doing the same thing and all doing fine.
As a science teacher I sort of don’t see the point in creating special honors bio, chem, and physics classes for the bright, accelerated kids as opposed to just letting them take the AP classes. You are basically teaching 90% of the material twice. These AP science classes are intro level survey classes so they cover all the basic materials. They aren’t upper-level specialty classes.
Correct, no AP science classes until senior year at D’s school.
For other other AP courses -
0 allowed freshman year
1 allowed sophomore year
2 allowed sophomore year (or 3 with special permission)
3 allowed senior year (or 4 with special permission)
Definitely not an AP race and “regular” honors courses were rigorous and weighed the same as AP.
AP teachers went well above and beyond AP curriculum and the school is starting to phase out APs in favor of entirely their own curriculum.
FWIW, when I was a kid, we followed the straight to AP model.
So what you are talking about is a school where the “honors” classes are really AP classes and the AP classes are really some sort of advanced AP classes. Which is fine, but it’s not what I suspect 99% of the other schools across the country are doing.
As a teacher, the one big advantage to just teaching regular AP classes is that there is an established and recognized curriculum with lots and lots of textbooks and teaching resources from summer teacher workshops to forums and such with participants from across the country. So as a teacher you have loads of support and resources. If you are a school that tries to go it alone with some different more advanced curriculum that is fine, but it is a tremendous amount of work for the teachers, especially newer teachers. That might work at elite prep schools where they can hire ultra-experienced and qualified staff for long tenures, and probably have low class sizes. But it isn’t going to work in any larger public school district where they have lots of turnover and inexperienced teachers who need the help and resources that a standardized curriculum provides.