I decided to take AP Physics 1 in my high school. Most boring and unnecessarily difficult course ever. My teacher is very vague when teaching, and tends to do activities that will not help us on the AP Physics 1 exam. Last year, no one in his class got a 5 on the exam, and about two got 4’s. One kid got a 3. You can guess the rest. I am seriously considering dropping this class and self-studying, since the textbook is more help than he is. I heard only 4% of students nationwide got 5’s last year.
If I drop the class with a passing grade, it will show up on my transcript. If I take the exam and get a 4 or 5 despite dropping the course, will this look bad for college? Or will it be impressive since I got a good score on such a difficult exam without a class?
Any sites you know to practice for the exam that will guarantee a 4 or 5 if used? (And with personal effort, of course.)
Getting a 4 on the Physics 1 exam isn’t really impressive…Getting a 5, on the other hand, will look amazing. So if you get a 5 with or without taking the class, colleges will still be impressed. But only IF you get a 5.
Yes, I know a website, called “educator.com”. Goes through each step very thoroughly, and I actually believe I got a 5 on all of my physics exams (1, 2, C Mech, and C E&M) thanks to Professor Fullerton on this website.
I testify on the educator.com premise. Got two fives on AP Physics C, which is supposedly the hardest APs just by watching Dan Fullerton’s videos. He is very thorough and it is definitely worth the money.
I took this course last year and can definitely agree that it was difficult. Unless you have some sort of crazy ridiculous schedule in which studying and class time can’t go together, I don’t recommend dropping the class. As vague as your teacher may be, (I had this problem too) class time is invaluable. Even one thing going through to you from a teacher makes much more sense than from a website because he/she can elaborate and answer questions immediately. Though I say that, I’d also recommend looking online for some scanned practice problems with the answer keys. My teacher pulled the formatting and style of questions from the internet for nearly every unit and I wasn’t surprised by anything on the exam. (I got a 4 but it’s because it’s just not my thing-plenty of people in my class got 5s).
At least it’s not as bad as my situation. No one in AP Physics 1 passed the exam last year, and this year, the only things we have covered were Kinematics and Forces (and we’re not even comfortable with those topics).