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<p>Dartmouth adopted its D-Plan as a way to admit women, without: 1) decreasing the number of men admitted each year; and, 2) building too many more beds on campus.</p>
<p>Only Sophomores are required to attend the Summer quarter, but then they must take another term ‘off’. That off term actually works to many students’ benefit: they have little competition for internships during that time; 2) they can spend the time doing LSAT/MCAT prep; 3) or do a multitude of other things.</p>
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<p>Problem is that, because of the unending and misleading propaganda, students and parents are not making choices based on accurate facts. On the one hand, you have a completely out of control College Board that has pushed the AP program to unhealthy levels through an active bribing of educators and an education system that rewards the teachers to actively support the heresy because it benefits them financially. On the other hand, you have an army of clueless GCs who are pushing unsuspecting students in believing that the AP courses are college levels and that a shorter higher education is optimal. </p>
<p>For all the above reasons, it is abundantly clear that we cannot count on the high schools to reform themselves and abandon their “school within a school” pet projects, and that we have to hope that colleges adopt the same measures as Dartmouth, or even better, make them even stronger.</p>
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It was Honors Calc II for Engineers. I don’t think I could have found a more advanced calc course. I did hear that calc 2 for non-engineers was even easier, though.</p>
<p>It wasn’t that the class was designed to be easy- it was simply that I felt I’d taken it before. In essence, I think my AP calculus teacher did a stellar job of preparing me.</p>
<p>That’s another thing- it seems to me that it’s highly dependent on the teacher as to whether an AP class really is worth the college credit it earns you.</p>
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<p>Could you have taken Calculus 3 after a 5 on BC?</p>
<p>It probably would have been a good idea to review the old final exams beforehand; then you would have known that taking Calculus 2 would have been a waste of time for you and gone straight to Calculus 3.</p>
<p>If you are getting AP credit for what is basically an elective, that is fine. However, if a student is getting AP credit for a course that is an important part of a successive order of courses that they need to take, that can be dangerous. </p>
<p>In other words, some students who get AP credit are not prepared fully for the next level of course in that subject. They may suddenly find themselves as a new freshman in a class full of sophomores or other classmates who had much more intensive preparation for that second or third course. </p>
<p>For my daughter, for instance, I have recommended to her that even if she gets AP credit for biology, she should at least audit the intro biology course in college her first semester, so she is prepared for upper level bio classes.</p>
<p>My son’s college offers a great alternative - a sequence of accelerated science classes for students who have AP credit, but who are not ready to jump right into upper level science classes.<br>
This system also works because that University doesn’t provide AP credit for the science labs. The University specifically tell students not to take the sophomore level science classes as a freshman.</p>
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<p>Since many schools have old final exams somewhere on their web sites (often in departmental web sites), she can review the old final exams to see which matches her situation:</p>
<p>(a) Old final exams are easy, and she knows all of the material.
(b) Old final exams are mostly easy, but there are a few things she does not know and can self-study.
(c) Old final exams are difficult or she has a lot of gaps, so it would be best to take the course at the college.</p>
<p>At many collleges, it is required to register officially for a course even to audit it and it may go on the record as such. If it is important for med school or other future plans to have that Bio course, take the danged course if you are going to sit there and audit it, and get the great grade you should be getting if you have the AP already for it… Your GPA is going to be very important in such scenairos as med school and they are not going to be impressed you audited the course rather than taking it. The work load, if she is truly going to go through that course is going to be the same and the way time is filled with the work one HAS to do, the likelihood of going through the motions meaninfully and getting to those crevices where the memory is weak or not there on a subject matter is small. THis is not a directed adult on a mission, but a kid at college we are talking about. You are expected to retake basic bio even with a 5 AP grade on it, in such a scenario as med schools, for instance, aren’t going to acknowledge that score as having taken the course. To chance a lower grade on an upper level course in such situations makes no sense.</p>
<p>My roommate in college was a brilliant scholar in the sciences, coming from a top NYC school She walked right into Organic Chem in college…and ended her med school chances right there. Yes, she took the more advanced version of inroganic chem required later and was a chem major but as a freshman new to the labs at that school and faced with those armed with the colllege’s own prep for that course, did not do as well as she should have. Big mistake. She is a welll known chemist today, but she did not get into medical school as a chem major at one of the top schools in the subject. Grades count. </p>
<p>So if Dartmouth or any other such schools want to do the kids a favor in terms of making sure they are prepareed to skip intro courses, they can screen them instead of taking AP or SAT2 test scores as a the prerqs. Just ending the credit, but giving the kids the pass is not addressing the issue.</p>
<p>I also wonder if something else is at work here. AP classes were originally meant to allow kids to get college credit for courses they took at a greatly reduced discount after taking the course, given the cost of college credits, and it could allow a student to take more advanced courses then they might otherwise have done. </p>
<p>What has happened is that the AP’s have become part of the hyperdrive admissions process to college these days. Whether mythology or real, it is like having the right number of EC’s, there is this thing out there that you need to take X number of APs, and the high achieving kids are pushing themselves to take scores of AP classes/tests simply as a basic hashmark, like getting X on the SAT’s or having Z EC’s is needed. Schools today get rated on how many AP’s they have and more troubling, on how many students take the AP’s (no matter what kind of grades they get on them)…</p>
<p>One of the problems with this is once again, putting all this emphasis on scores on standardized tests and frankly on something that can be gamed and give some kids unfair advantages (put it this way, there are cram courses for the AP exams, that aren’t cheap, that many kids may not be able to afford)…more importantly, I could argue that for example, taking physics AP may not mean much in terms of how physics is taught in school. The AP test that I recall was a multiple choice test, and it basically consisted of problems where you memorized the formulas and spit back the answers, so for example you would get an infamous problem of "a ball of mass M is placed at height X above the ground, the ball is dropped, what is the kinetic energy of the ball hitting the ground (kind of a stupid question, but I recall one like that). I was deranged and took physics for majors, and it wasn’t like that, we could have all the formulas with us and it didn’t matter, because the problems required solving the problem using though, not plug in the formula and go…so the AP test would actually bare little resemblance to the work done at the college level.</p>
<p>I could be wrong (believe me, colleges grubbing for money wouldn’t surprise me), but it also may be that they are trying to figure out a way to differentiate kids without depending on the standardized tests as much, because that process is so being gamed, and perhaps they are realizing they are getting a bunch of applicants who are great at gaming the system and doing well on standardized tests who otherwise might not bring a lot to the school…as you can tell, I am not a big favor of test scores being the be all and end all, and there is pretty good evidence out there about what that kind of approach creates in systems that do that…I kind of hope so, these standardized tests remind me of the arms merchant who has major propaganda machines going in two countries that are rivals/enemies, getting them both to stockpile the weapons he sells, in this case, the College Board has pushed AP’s as this magic thing to students and schools and on the other hand has gotten college admissions people to buy into the notion that AP classes are this incredible thing. Unfortunately, standardized classes like the AP are a lot easier for schools to implement, then true honors levels programs that push the envelope, AP tests measure taking the class and regurgitating the knowledge for a score, it is all pretty well defined, whereas with a true honors program it takes dipping their feet into the unstructured and unknown. I would rather get rid of the AP tests entirely, given how they have been gamed and misused in my opinion, and rather have the college have its own placement tests where they can give credit if called for and place kids, but not likely to happen, we kind of live in a society where the all in one, quick fix thing is the way to go…</p>
<p>What has happened is that high schools are being rated for the number of AP courses they offer and the % of kids taking AP, so more high schools are offering these courses. Some of them are not doing such a great job as evidenced by their profiles which generally have AP breakdowns as to % of students taking the courses, test scores gotten. But in many cases, the AP courses are the most difficult ones students can take. </p>
<p>For high schools known to the selective colleges, it 's no big deal whether the kids take AP or not. Some schools have even dropped the AP designation from the courses. If you go to certain schools like Stuyvesant, Scarsdale High, Exeter, to name a few, I don’t think AP matters much. If you go to XYZ High school that doesn’t have many kids even applying to anything other than state and local schools, ti can. So even without giving college credit, the APs have their purpose. It allows admissions officers to take a quick glance at courses taken and give it a rigor assesment. You have to remember these guys are under the gun in processing apps and no matter all of the assurances given as to how thoroughly each application is read , if pressed, the time spend per app is appalling small. Like under 10 minutes, maybe even 5 before a decision is made. So, yes, there is a place for AP in that it can give the snapshot of the likely rigor a student has undergone. Doesn’t look good if you go to a school with APs and most of the kids take them and you don’t.</p>
<p>As for giving college credit, it has become an antsy thing these years as to getting credit. Colleges are becoming increasingly loathe to give credit for other school’s courses. Some flat out won’t do it once you are enrolled except by previous permision for summer courses. Some won’t even let you do that, or have restrictions beyond the residency requirements. </p>
<p>IMO, if you want to say AP test scores aren’t cutting it as a subsitute for the corresponding course at your college, then don’t accept them as a prereq either. Screen the kid yourself. Hypocrite to give that as a reason, and yet let the kid move on in courses on that basis but not give the credit. Most schools already limit how many credits you can use from other sources towards graduation anyways. This just limits them further. I’m not sure what they are trying to achieve.</p>
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<p>You do know that Dartmouth gives free tuition for families making 100K with typical assets. In addition, they are not required to borrow $ for their Dartmouth education.</p>
<p>[News</a> & Announcements](<a href=“Home | Financial Aid”>Home | Financial Aid)</p>
<p>I think that this means that Dartmouth has the low income families or lower middle class income families covered ;).</p>
<p>^^Offering (in some cases pushing) APs to kids who are unprepared for them is a major pet peeve of mine. There are too many kids out there getting A’s and B’s in their AP classes then scoring a 2 on the AP. Imagine if it were mandated that one’s AP score would determine one’s class grade-you’d see a whole lot fewer kids taking the AP.
Last year for AP English Lit and Comp the percentile breakdown was:
5: 8.3
4: 18.0
3: 30.4
2: 32.3
1: 11.1</p>
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<p>Any major today require these for GE, though… Liberal arts does not <em>specialize</em> in mathematics or science - they are part of a wider breadth. This differs from the 14 non-liberal arts majors offered at Dartmouth (e.g., engineering and neuroscience) I mentioned. For those 14 majors it is the focus.</p>
<p>The AP tests, in general, fulfill requirements for lower level undergraduate GE courses (freshman or sophomore level) not higher level GE courses (junior or senior level). There is a unit cap which requires a certain amount of credits for graduation - a specific set in each area of GE included (mostly lower level, then some higher level). E.g., 120 credits for a bachelor’s. Each major has a differing amount of credits required for graduation, some which are far less than others. Some liberal arts, I have seen, have a lower credit requirement than some degrees required for healthcare preparation. This harms all majors by taking away AP credits.</p>
<p>Taking away AP credits essentially replaces one GE… with another GE. (This does not make sense in the long run).
This lower level GE (or replacement class, possibly a higher level GE) could be in a class not needed in the first place. Even if this replacement class is desired, without the AP credit, one then has to take another class for the nonnegotiable required credits for the cap - a class which may be unwanted (another lower level GE) or not even necessary (not related to the major). It can take time away from focusing on one’s major and/or raises the cost ($$$,$$$) for attendance, which already is spiraling out of control as a nationwide epidemic.</p>
<p>By permitting AP credits, a person can be finished with nearly all of their lower level GE requirements before high school graduation, allowing them to take the few needed junior or senior level GE classes. This lets them begin the work on their major earlier, saving valuable time and money. By graduating early, they can then have more time for higher level work (e.g., graduate school) at a younger age. </p>
<p>A bachelor’s degree is merely the beginning for some students’ aspirations and goals.</p>
<p>By cutting off ALL AP credit, Dartmouth is 1) raising the cost, 2) possibly causing the 4 year time span to increase or become increasingly difficult for the 14 non-liberal art majors previously mentioned, 3) not being welcoming to the lower and middle classes from public/ AP orientated schools, and 4) not encouraging students to graduate early with bachelor’s to then go on to more advanced degrees and, thus, higher-level graduate work.</p>
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The cost of college was also less then. Now Dartmouth costs $240K for 4 years. More AP credits are life-savers for those who have to pay the $60K a year price tag.</p>
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Yes - it is called CLEP or challenging courses. Then this would open one up to higher level writing courses if wanted. Why should a person take a course if they already know the knowledge? Should they not be able to bypass it, save money, and go onto higher courses to challenge themselves and eventually advanced degrees?</p>
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<p>Public universities seem to be a lot more generous with transfer credit (as well as AP credit units), probably because (a) they may have a mission to allow students starting at community college to finish bachelor’s degrees, (b) the community colleges emulate the courses found at the same-state public universities, (c) the public universities want students to graduate as quickly as possible to minimize any given student’s use of in-state tuition subsidy.</p>
<p>Private universities may have different motivations in that they may have a more structured four year college experience (as opposed to just completing the courses on the degree requirement checklist), as well as not wanting to lose revenue from early graduates. Many accept very few transfer students (note that Dartmouth limits transfer credit to slightly less than half of the total amount needed to graduate, so that a “junior” transfer needs to overload at least one quarter to avoid taking more than six quarters).</p>
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<p>Ummm, math and science are generally considered liberal arts, although explicitly pre-professional majors like engineering and nursing are not. Something similar applies to economics and sociology, which are considered liberal arts, while business is not.</p>
<p>Why not indeed offer credit for a certain score on the SAT2 IF YOU DEMONSTRATE YOU HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE being taught in a course that is considered covering that material. Most colleges have departmental exams where you can test into certain sections or advanced courses. You take the placement exam and they plave you. You don’t have to have a SAT2 or AP test score. But you don’t get the credit, which I think is hypocritical. </p>
<p>It’s the direction this is taking that disturbs me. I suspect it’s more to force students to take more credits at a given college than an pseudo concern for preparedness. If it’s preparedness that is the concern the college would vet those kids wanting to skip prerequisites instead of giving them a pass with certain test scores. They are not doing that but just taking away the credit.</p>
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<p>If they lowered their tuition costs, they would not need to increase their federal aid to such levels. By increasing federal aid and not lowering tuition costs, they are simply putting a band aid on the problem - which should be confronted by lowering tuition costs and not increasing inflation. When does the inflation end?</p>
<p>Is this for all four years? Does this include graduate school?</p>
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<p>Then why is a liberal arts degree typically a BA (bachelors in arts), and the others are BS (bachelors in science) degrees?</p>
<p>I am referring to the <em>typical</em> liberal arts degree - a BA.</p>
<p>That Dartmouth has put money in one area of the school means nothing to another area. Even the tightest schools willl spend some money here and there. Doesn’t mean anything to someone not affected by that move. </p>
<p>The thing is, a lot of kids may be affected by the Dartmouth AP move. It can mean extra terms at Dartmouth that cost more money. With D because of the trimester system it’s hard to tell what their graduation rates are, as kids are encouraged to use that terrilby undersubscribed summer trimester. THat has been the case ever since I can remember. I believe the school used to, maybe still does require a trimester. There is a financial reason for this.</p>
<p>My friend was hit hard by her son’s school that basically takes no outside college credits once you enroll there. You want the credit you do it at the school. Can’t take a cheap state school course over the summer to help you out if you fell under one term. Only exception is if you pay the school and go through their exchange programs or abroad program. It’s a movement I am seeing happening at a lot of schools.</p>
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<p>I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t social media stalk me by looking at all my other posts in all the different threads I have posted. One reason I rarely use facebook because as soon as one posts something… EVERYONE knows it. Takes the interest out of getting to know people if you can simply look up details without actually talking with them… It also can be creepy if they look around at all of your previous conversations without your knowledge (stalking).</p>
<p>I’m not going to respond to the rest of the post. It seems that you have a problem with me and take offense at everything I write when I am simply stating a humble opinion, not a dictatorship- type stance where everyone must agree or else… Not meant to be offensive or directed at… anyone in particular. (?)</p>
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<p>Yes, it includes 4 years of undergrad (5 years if you in an approved 5 year program; getting an AB and a degree in engineering). </p>
<p>Financial aid for grad programs is a different process at every grad program in the country, because grad students are considered independent for federal aid. If you are not attending a fully funded PhD, most financial aid for masters programs is in the form of loans. For Professional schools that give need based aid, they will still require your parent’s income and assets.</p>