For all those objecting, what makes you think the AP course your child took bears any relationship at all to the one the College Board sets forth? You relied on the teacher claiming it did? Or the school? Why? I have personal experience with courses that claimed to be AP, and weren’t taught remotely resembling the AP curriculum, which became obvious when half the class failed the test. At another nearby urban school, almost everyone is pushed into the AP classes to make the high school look good, but even the teachers will say not a single student could pass the AP exam. It seems many parents look at AP classes as a quality indicator of the high school, and personally expect to get some type of gpa/admission boost for them, but are unwilling to participate in the quality control test necessary to ensure it really is an AP level course.
My boys’ school makes them take the AP tests and we have to pay for them which gets extremely expensive. But for me the biggest issue is the quality of the teacher. Why pay for a test and sit through it when you know the teacher has not prepared the kids well enough. College Board is a money machine!
“how do you figure a $90 test to be expensive when a class at a private school can easily cost thousands of dollars?”
It is a good deal for the kid (if they put some effort into it), but what I meant was that it is expensive for the school. It seems the “HS prestige factor”/outcome is similar whether they force kids to take the test and use the carrots or the sticks OR just let self-selected motivated students to voluntarily pay for and take the exam. Either way will likely yield a high percentage of test takers performing at 3+ that they can brag about on their School Profile, but the second option costs the school very little. Of course colleges don’t give credit for 1s or 2s (in many cases not even a 3), so that’s money down the drain.
Yes the AP exam was required at my kids’ high school if you signed up for an AP class. The AP exam replaced a traditional “final exam.”
No, not required at our HS unless the AP class was also taken as a dual enrollment class. I’m glad; why spend that money if the college you’re interested in won’t take the AP credit?
and to the other question - why take the class if you’re not going to take the test – good question. For us, my kiddos did that a few times because that AP class wasn’t offered as a regular class (eg: AP art history, AP physics, AP music theory) the subject was of interest, but the credits wouldn’t help in college for their majors. (or in one case, there was a well-loved, but bad teacher!)
@roycroftmom Kids at my daughter’s school have a very good track record for doing well enough on the AP tests to receive credit, so I think that their AP classes are doing a pretty good job in teaching kids the AP material.
Most kids who take AP classes do so because of the opportunity to get college credit, and most colleges will give a kid credit for AP scores.
Another thing is that it’s easier to get a 5 on the AP exam than it is to get an A in an AP exam. In many AP exams, a 69% will get you a 5, but performing at that level will be unlikely to get you an A in AP Calc BC.
As for “half the class failed the test”, I hope you realize that there are AP courses in which almost half the students, or more, across the USA who take the test get less than 3. For example, 47% of all kids who take AP USGP score less than 3, as do 48% of all kids who take APUSH, 52% of all kids who take AP Environmental Science, 52% for AP English Lit & Comp, and 59% of all kids who take AP Physics I. Most of the rest have “failure” rates of 35%-45%. Only in art and language APs (except Latin) are the number of kids who get less than three 3 small, as well as in advanced science and math AP courses (because of extreme self-selection). So unless the class had a 50% failure rate in AP Spanish or AP Chinese, I wouldn’t read much into the “half the class failing”.
@Luanne “S22 is in 1 AP now and if he opts not to take the AP test, he must take the final exam in the class. If he takes the AP test, the final is optional.”
Are the results of the AP exam factored in to the final course grade? For example, you have an “A” going in to the final but chose to take the AP exam (and no final), what happens if you bomb the AP exam (get a 1), is that score factored in to the final course grade?
btw - at our HS you have to take the final exam and taking the AP exam is optional but the class is mostly geared towards preparing you for the AP exam (“teach to the test”). The grading system is 5.0 if you take honors/AP classes. So many top students have a weighted 4.5+ and 4.0 unweighted GPA. Scores on the AP exam have no bearing on grade point average.
My last point is that getting all 4 and 5’s on AP exams might give you a small admissions boost when applying to college. Another reason to take the AP exams (freshman through junior years).
No, no requirement from the schools here to take AP tests. Mid-to-large size California publics.
California has a no-pay-to-play law that would make requiring payment for a test to get HS credit or grade bump illegal. Public schools that want to require the tests would have to cover the cost for all students, not just low-income.
The grades in our AP classes are completely separate from the AP tests, and there is no retroactive bump. AP classes are weighted, but there is generally no honors option if there is an AP for that subject (except Chemistry, which has honors and AP options).
Also no requirement to take IB tests for IB classes taken a la carte.
My son took 6 AP tests senior year despite getting no AP credit at Caltech. Students admitted to Caltech receive email from Caltech stating that failing to take AP tests that they listed as “planned” on their application is a violation of Caltech’s honor code, because planned APs are taken into consideration in admissions. (“No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community.” and applicants are considered “members of the community”) He was taking 3 AP classes, listed 5 as planned, and took 6 tests. (He learned the Microeconomics material while on an Econ Challenge team.)
Son’s Silicon Valley pressure cooker high school did not require students to take AP tests for the classes. And no grade replacement if the student got a 5. Plus final for the class 2nd semester before the AP test was mandatory regardless of whether the student took the test or not.
Yes at our public hs you had to take the exam to get credit/bump to gpa for advanced course. We had to pay for them as well. There was scholarship $$ for those with financial need
@skieurope the reason you take the exam even though your college won’t give you credit, because sometimes live throws you curve balls. I know a number of students who have left their original college for one reason or another and the new college had much more generous policies about accepting AP credits. Eons ago, I got a semester’s worth of credits from Columbia’s grad school in Architecture because I had more credits than I needed to graduate from Harvard and took a number of graduate level courses. Part of the reason I had extra credits was the AP courses I had taken.
FWIW our school required students to take the exam, and I think we paid for them in the fall, long before anyone had heard that they’d been accepted at any particular college. Our school will pay for the test for anyone on free or reduced lunch, and would probably pay if you asked. I think requiring the test also makes it clear which teachers are capable of teaching the courses and which aren’t. Most of the teachers had excellent pass rates. (75%+ with 4s and 5s.)
Nope. And no way no how was my kid who knew she’d get no credit for the exam going to take any her senior year. She had a fabulously fun second semester! I fully supported this. Our school also had no finals for second semester seniors which was awesome!
No requirement at our top public high schools. Testing is encouraged, but it is up to students/parents to choose/pay to test. Sometimes kids will cancel after they register for an AP test because they feel unprepared. (A teacher thanked my son for cancelling a test–teachers like to keep up their averages, too!) Somestimes students will pay for both dual enrollment credits and AP exams for the same course because they don’t know which will get them more credit at their (still unknown) college. Testing or not testing doesn’t affect weighted grades. AP classes are all weighted and may have their own final exams–varies by teacher/course. No grade bump for getting a 5.
My public high school requires you to bend over backwards to complete a waiver if you aren’t going to take the AP exam. The pressure is pretty bad, but I’ve been able to bend without breaking on this one. My kiddo was going to have three exams in two days and one of her AP classes was actually dual-enrollment with the local university, so we just went with the dual enrollment credit.
My kids went to a private school. In order to receive AP weighting on your transcript you had to take the AP exam. If you took an AP class and did not take the exam the weighting of the class went to Honors weighting. Plus you had to take a final for the class, which counted towards your final grade (AP exam did not).
While not a requirement and not factored into the grade, it is expected that kids take the AP test, especially at grades below senior year. While colleges may not hold it against a kid, it may raise a red flag if a kid takes 5 AP courses and no AP tests. My oldest did not take the AP lang test as a senior since the college he was attending did not give credit for english classes and required a freshman writing class. He did take the others, even though I don’t think it ended up helping much in terms of credit. My youngest got out of taking calculus by his AP score.
In our state, the number of AP exams given and the percent passing is one factor in rankings by a local magazine. I am not sure what would happen if a lot of kid opted out of the exams. The students are well prepared and virtually all pass on most tests, with many getting 4s and 5s.
AP courses are only as good as the teachers who teach them. Additionally those who have successful pass rates for the AP tests are teaching to the test. It is just not the same as a college level class taught by a Ph. D. , however I realize not all students will be going to a college where introductory level classes are taught by Ph.D.'s. My DS had more than 30 hours of AP/Dual Credit (without taking several exams his senior year), the colleges we looked would not accept more than 30 hours of credit from AP/Dual Credit maybe that is not the case at some colleges.
@skieurope I did not know that you had to list AP/Dual Credit classes in addition to the college courses if your college would not accept them. This actually makes me so happy my DD did not take AP sciences as her college does not accept AP for their intro Chem or Bio. I guess it was a good thing the teachers who teach those AP classes had a really bad rep and she opted not to waste her time with those classes.
DS19 is in the first cohort of the AP program at his high school, but there is no requirement to take the AP exam. AP is not actually recognized as part of our official high school curriculum (and neither is IB) so he will get credit for the equivalent “honours” level course and is required to write the final “honours” level exam. There is no bump to the final mark for taking the AP course or for writing the AP exam. Since the content of AP courses is not recognized as part of the official high school curriculum the material can have no impact on the students’ high school marks. They can only be assessed on the material covered in the official curriculum. The AP exam is strictly for university credit and it’s up to the student to decide whether or not they want to write it. His high school transcript sent to the universities he has applied to does not designate AP courses. They use the “honours” level course code. If students wish to be considered for transfer credit they need to have the College Board submit their AP transcript directly to the universities in question.
He will most likely write exams for 2 of the 3 AP courses he is taking this year even though he won’t get/take university credit for them. It will be a good experience for him to see what a university exam is potentially like. I’ve also read a study that shows there is a marked difference in first year university performance between students who write the AP exam and those that don’t. I’m not sure if the reason is that those who opt to write the exam are stronger students in that subject or whether the act of the studying for the exam helps consolidate the material better. In any case he wants to write them so I’m willing to pay to let him do so.
I disagree with this generalization. My daughter had some amazing AP teachers that went well above and beyond what was in the AP curriculum, and their students still rocked the test.
Our AP Euro class was taught by a Phd and included lots of stuff that was not on the test. AP Latin teacher was all but dissertation. One of the AP Bio teachers had a Phd as well. You have to realize also that the classes are intro level classes for a middling level university.