<p>^I believe Harvard allows AP takers to finish in 3 years.</p>
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<p>However, the point is that high school students may be misled into thinking that the “AP lite” courses’ difficulty is like that of college courses, then get to college and find actual college courses to be much more difficult due to going twice as fast for the same amount of material.</p>
<p>The kind of students that go to Dartmouth (or Harvard, perazziman) are usually not looking to acquire a credential and get out in as little time as possible.</p>
<p>S took 8 APs and got 5s on all but one of the tests (a 4). He took MORE courses than he needed to as an undergrad at D. I think that is typical.</p>
<p>I don’t see this as any kind of a ploy involving employment or monetary gain. I have no problem at all with the school using APs for placement but not granting credit.</p>
<p>This reminds me of a person I met once who boasted that he acquired a business degree from Michigan State without ever reading an actual book. (Other than a text book.) Different mindset, different goals. If that’s your goal, apply elsewhere. D will have no trouble filling its places with highly qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Dartmouth’s methodology in determining its new policy is slowly leaking out. <a href=“Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test - The New York Times”>Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test - The New York Times; </p>
<p>It appears that the Psychology department was concerned that students who scored 5 on AP psych were not prepared to skip intro psych. So, the department administered a final exam to incoming freshmen. Not surprisingly, most failed. The only real surprise to me is how did 10% pass, given that there was no time to study any material?</p>
<p>[In my kids school, AP psych is typically taken by 9th and 10th graders - I wonder how many retained all that knowledge several years later and could reasonably be expected to pass a pop final?]</p>
<p>So, Dartmouth took the results from the psych pop final, extrapolated the results to Calculus, Chem, Bio (recognized as tougher APs) to craft an across the board solution. Many of Dartmouth’s “peer” schools do not even offer credit for AP psychology (e.g., princeton). I question the rigor of Dartmouth’s scientific approach. I question the sweeping conclusions drawn from such a flawed process. Equating the knowledge obtained from AP psych to AP Calc is, in my opinion, far from certain and would need to be explained.</p>
<p>Dartmouth’s sweeping conclusion (I.e., that a failed non prepped psych final means that kds who had 5s in Calc BC don’t know the material at the college level) reeks of result oriented reasoning and a very flawed experiment design. I would like Dartmouth to reveal more about the protocols used in the experiment - let us see what is behind the curtain.</p>
<p>If a student has mastered several semesters of, let’s say, Calc, that student should have the OPTION of graduating a little earlier or taking additional courses. Dartmouth’s position removes the OPTION and FORCES it’s future students to incur needless costs.</p>
<p>stemit, Dartmouth already offers calculus at a variety of levels. The AP exam is used as a placement guide. Students who have mastered the subject at a certain level are already free to begin with a more advanced class or move on to other courses. </p>
<p>There is no problem here. The options already exist.</p>
<p>I don’t think it at all unreasonable for a college to expect that students who place out of some introductory classes will study something else instead. It’s liberal arts education, not vocational training.</p>
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<p>It may affect those who major in engineering, since Dartmouth’s ABET-accredited engineering majors are nominally more than 12-quarter bachelor’s degree programs. On the other hand, I don’t see why someone would go to Dartmouth to study engineering.</p>
<p>Re: #64</p>
<p>The effect on placement might not actually be that big, since Dartmouth already has its own placement procedure for subjects like math and foreign languages. Which leaves one to suspect that preventing early graduation using AP credit unit as the motivation, though it is not obvious whether that occurs much anyway.</p>
<p>Consolation - notice I didn’t say that the students would repeat a course like intro Calc. </p>
<p>But, if a student has mastered the intro material, AND is good enough by Dartmouth’s standards to be permitted to skip that intro course, why not give the credit - if the STUDENT so requests? What Dartmouth is doing is eliminating the OPTION to claim credit by the student. </p>
<p>And also notice, Dartmouth is not claiming that the student needs four years of college; Dartmouth is claiming, as a result of AP psychology scores, that the student is not prepared for advanced college courses in all other areas based upon the AP results.</p>
<p>Put another way: why is the AP Calc (just as an example) result good enough to place a student out of intro Calc, but not good enough to get credit for that very placement?</p>
<p>ucb, you may be right regarding engineering students, but if they are that advanced in math and physics or whatever they can start taking more advanced engineering classes earlier, as I believe an earlier poster’s son did.</p>
<p>Presumably, a student interested in engineering chooses D because they are interested in combining that with a top flight undergraduate liberal arts education. Perfectly reasonable to me.</p>
<p>I think a motivation is to fill that summer term that they have a heck of a time filling.</p>
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<p>Wow aren’t you overreacting? I pointed out that Harvard has a program for AP students to graduate in three years. </p>
<p>By the way, if Dartmouth gets the same kind of students as Harvard then why does Dartmouth have to take this step to persuade them to stay four years and Harvard does not? Apparently, they are not the same kind of students.</p>
<p>perazziman, I’m not over-reacting at all. I’m making a simple statement of fact. None of the kids I’ve known who entered either D or H ever used AP credit to graduate early. They want to learn MORE, not the minimum allowable.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, plenty of kids do more than one summer term. I know mine did. </p>
<p>stemit, you are missing the point.</p>
<p>Look, if you are the kind of person who wants a working credential (or a professional school prereq) from a reputable institution, and wants to obtain that as quickly as possible, the nation has plenty of flagship publics that will grant you AP credit and help you achieve your goal. Don’t apply to D, or Williams, or CalTech, or any of the other places that don’t grant AP credit, because they have other expectations of their students. It’s not a fit for you.</p>
<p>It is like applying to the University of Chicago and bitterly complaining about the Core, claiming that it is just there to make money for the university or force you to take classes in departments that would otherwise be shut down.</p>
<p>There are plenty of other choices out there. Pick one. If you are a viable candidate for D or Williams, or CalTech, you will have plenty of options.</p>
<p>I was perusing a separate thread on GPA, class rank and AP classes and ran into the AP Lite thought process. Hopefully, this position hasn’t been stated already, but to the poster who noted that they didn’t think it was right to grant a full-year’s college credit for a full-year of high school work: in general, from what I’ve seen in looking at the AP credit policy of a lot of colleges - with the exception of a few APs, the AP is a semester of credit for a full year of high school work. I think for the exceptions, the course material is more rigorous (i.e Calc BC) and covers what is generally covered in two college semester’s work in that subject.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why folks are hung up on WHERE the work is accomplished, or how LONG it takes to accomplish as long as the appropriate corresponding curriculum is covered. I don’t have a problem with colleges making the credit conditional upon successful completion of succeeding classes.</p>
<p>My son is taking BC (as well as others) and intends, especially for his math classes, to take the school’s placement exam in order to make sure he feels he will successfully complete more advanced classes. But, part of our college dialog has been that I felt he should take as many of the AP tests as he can so that he will have more room to explore classes in college if he’s already mastered the beginning curriculum. And, if he can graduate early or accomplish a master’s in 4 years, so much the better - but it will be up to him.</p>
<p>I guess I have one final thought. I wonder why we would want to penalize kids for taking more rigorous coursework (and demonstrating success by passing a comprehensive test). Some kids will enter college taking a standard high school courseload, and will be expected to succeed in college. Why not give those who were capable of starting the college trajectory of curriculum early some credit for having done so?</p>
<p>Maybe so many kids getting into the Ivies have so much AP credit that it really is skewing the typical 4 year graduation path, although I agree with a prior poster that there are so many waiting for a berth, I’m not sure this is making a financial difference for Dartmouth, so much as it is them relying on a flawed study (caveat - I have NOT read the full Dartmouth rationale. I’m basing this on the description of reliance on just the Psychology test).</p>
<p>At least with the APs, as there is a required curriculum and a set test, you can gauge a student’s actual proficiency in comparison to other AP students by their scores.</p>
<p>Haven’t read the replies or even the article (I will after I post this) but as a highschool student, seeing an ivy league not allow AP credit seems to really make sense to me, coming from a public highschool.</p>
<p>Even in a wealthy town with a supposedly excellent public education system (so the rankings say), a lot of the ap classes are a joke, and I can vouch that less than 5% of the students actually care about learning, they only take it because of the AP tag, which isn’t a bad reason, unless your doing the bare minimum to pass and knowing that your grade will be inflated because it is an AP class, not to mention that you don’t learn anything much and that the curriculum your being taught is structured around to what will be on the AP test which severely limits you from expanding on some topics and needing to progress quickly through material. </p>
<p>And thats in the best case scenario for when the material is actually challenging, there are some AP classes that are a joke and barely do anything. I haven’t been through college yet (I am a senior now) but I can say that I fit the student description that I just described, I am in AP Biology because it had the reputation of being able to get A’s even if you barely pass every test (or fail half the tests) just by doing all the labs/ extra credit assignments/ inflation- I have no interest in Biology and my teacher is very poor at public speaking so in her lectures, I and I can suppose the rest of the class, drift off into daydream until the bell rings. </p>
<p>I am also in AP literature, which is more interesting because I have a good teacher who shows us some interesting novels and short stories, except every week we have an in-class question paper assignment (about a page-2page long paragraph) in which we analyze a quote extracted from a short story we read that week. I am not a great writer when there is a fast deadline (like 45 minute deadline) and because of that, I often get 3/5s or 3.5/5s (which are like 70s?) (never got a 4 which is supposedly a grade that is given when you master the material), and each week I get this paper back with the same 3/3.5 not knowing how to improve because while he does put some marks on the margins, it is story related and he doesn’t point out any recurring mistakes I am making that is bringing my grade down. I could go in during extra help to ask him, but he doesn’t have any free periods in common with me so it would have to be after school lwhere his class is pretty out of the way and well you know… I’m a senior… I just want to get into college (you could say “well thats YOUR FAULT” but you know what, Literature isn’t what I want to major in when I get older, I took this class because of the AP tag, I know I will be a lot more motivated in college to learn for the sake of learning instead of for a grade, in fact I spend a lot of time self-teaching myself things I find interesting at home that isn’t offered at school like programming, business, psychology, etc)</p>
<p>I didn’t even take these AP classes for credits, the credits are just a bonus should my college accept it. I took these AP classes just to get into college. </p>
<p>Well thats my 2cents as a highschool student, I will read the article now, sorry this is so long. And my ideas about highschool is one shared among most people in my grade, people who are going to schools like WashU- Saint Louis, UPenn Wharton, and UMichigan.</p>
<p>I didn’t proofread this so please don’t be harsh on grammatical errors >.>, I wasn’t planning on writing this much but I just sort of typed and ideas came out.</p>
<p>I always thought that there were students attending an elite college to acquire a credential, knowing the value of that elite college (say, Dartmouth or Harvard) and what lucrative doors it opens, who would want to get out as fast as possible… but no more often than at non-elite schools.</p>
<p>Personally, I like Carleton’s approach on the issue, described by aliceinw in post 45, get a minimum grade in a course above the AP level course and get credit for the AP course too.</p>
<p>Thank you Dartmouth! Hopefully it will prompt other schools to follow them. I bet that some high schools have AP courses that are designed to be as hard as college classes, but in my case they aren’t. Even though I may get 5’s on AP tests, does that really represent the mastery of a subject that you would achieve studying 2-3 hours every day on that one subject? I think not, especially not at a top-tier school.</p>
<p>Just another money grab by the elitist Northeast schools. So, what, taking a class with 500 other students taught by some TA is somehow much better than a HS AP class? This type of action is exactly how labor unions priced themselves out of jobs (i.e. you combine this action with the absurd inflation in college tuition and more alternatives to the “on campus” experience will be offered that are far less costly). The gall…</p>
<p>@ExhaustedDad Dartmouth classes are not taught by TAs and classes are way smaller than that. Just saying.</p>
<p>Still a money grab.</p>
<p>Here’s a thought for discussion. If a student takes 28 APs in high school (unrealistic, I grant, but go with me here), then takes 4 courses at Dartmouth, have they achieved a Dartmouth education? What’s the difference between a high school AP, a community college course and an Ivy League course? Are all courses and all teachers created equal? Is there valuable learning that goes on in the classroom outside of the strictly defined curriculum?</p>