My son took five AP classes his junior year. He made A’s in all the classes but only had a 2 in APUSH. He had a really terrible teacher; I knew he was in trouble when I asked him where they were at Spring Break and they hadn’t gotten to the American Civil War. My daughter took it the same year with a different teacher and got a 4.
There is no magic formula for admission or to getting merit scholarships, but the more a student can do, the better. For that reason, yes students should take APUSH.
I see very few mentions of the FINANCIAL benefits of AP and dual enrollment classes. Even with free tuition through merit aid, college is extremely expensive. The six hours earned from APUSH equals 20 percent of the credits typically earned in college in one year. If the cost of college is $25,000 per year, then the value of taking and passing APUSH is $5,000. There is no reason why a student with access to a four-year university shouldn’t graduate with about 60 hours of AP and dual enrollment credit, thus saving a full two years of college expense.
“There is no reason why a student with access to a four-year university shouldn’t graduate with about 60 hours of AP and dual enrollment credit, thus saving a full two years of college expense.”
A few reasons, some kids have ECs, for example competitive sports or part-time jobs as well as a full class schedule so they can’t take dual enrollment at a four year college. Also, for some schools, you don’t get college credit for some AP classes. Lastly, many kids want to attend college for 4 years to get the full college experience and figure out what they want to do for the rest of their life. It’s just isn’t about how much money they can save by taking DE and APs in high school.
Because few students graduate in under 4 years.
Sure there is. For starters, many top-tier colleges, primarily privates, cap AP credit (for which the minimum score required is a 5) to one semester or one year, if they offer credit at all. Along the same lines, many private colleges do not accept DE courses as transfer credit. Secondly, at some colleges, for some exams, AP credit it given as general credit which may or may not be applied to major requirements or gen ed requirements. Thirdly, it may be logistically impossible to schedule all requirements within 2 (or 3) years. Finally, as mentioned above, 2 years does not equate to a full college experience.
But, of course, what’s important for one student may not be applicable to another, and what’s applicable/important for a student attending a small private college may be different for a large public flagship.
@EarlVanDorn does make a valid point though for families that are struggling with financing colleges. Many flagship public accept APs and Dual Credits, and even if you couldn’t technically graduate early, you could take one fewer class/semester and hold down a job. My daughter was three credits shy of being considered a junior. No way could she graduate 1 1/2- 2 years early but many, many students do shave off one semester. That’s $20K based on the COA for OOS.
@socaldad2002 @skieurope make valid points; Dual enrollment and AP credits certainly won’t transfer to every school, and some elite schools only accept scores of 5 for credit and put limits in place even at that.
Most state schools allow almost unlimited dual enrollment and AP credit. Alabama gave my son credit for 68 hours, including credit for an Intermediate Accounting course that he had to retake (they just gave it a new name). Since he’s an accounting major he has to have 150 hours to take the CPA exam, and the extra credits will shave two years off the time he will be in school. He has an internship lined up for next summer that for most ends up with a job offer, so he will be out of school and into the job market a year or two earlier than he otherwise would have been without the high school credits. He is still having plenty of fun.
It honestly depends on the school. Personally, I RARELY had homework in apush, but my friend at a different school had 1-2 hours a night. Overall, I would recommend the class because it honestly teaches you a lot about history and it improved my writing tremendously. The only ‘homework’ I had was reading the textbook, but I’m not going to lie, I gave that up after chapter 5 (in a book with 41 chapters) and if we had a quiz over the reading (VERY rare) I would go over the corresponding notes (apnotes.net) online. We would have homework packets once every ~2 months with some practice AP multiple choice & short answer questions. The only other thing I did outside of class was preparing for dbq’s or essays we were writing in class. Again, my experience is very different than others, so really just ask students at your school who have taken the class on what the workload is like. Don’t know if it necessarily boosts application, but makes your schedule more rigorous, so that helps.
Regarding the savings at a university, assuming that the university took AP credits, the way you would save is if you had a bunch of credits (at least 16) and would get your degree in less than 4 years. Most schools charge by the semester or quarter for full-time attendance and not by the unit, so the savings per class is more or less invalidated. The other thing to consider is that many STEM-related majors have course and sequence requirements, not to mention prerequisites and competition for registration that will be very hard to squeeze in in less than 4 years. As such, many people with AP eligible credits will wind up not using them in college.
I think people overthink it when it comes to APUSH. As long as the teacher is good, there’s no reason not to take it. It’s a medium difficulty course, not too easy but not too hard.