AP courses, with their proliferation, serve primarily as a money maker for the College Board. They served more useful purposes once upon a time. A few of them in the core subjects are still useful as common benchmarks for disparate high schools, but peripheral ones are really not needed. Using the number of AP courses offered by schools or taken by students as measures of success is therefore totally unwarranted. AP courses are generally not up to the standards of top colleges. Caltech, for example, gives zero credit for any AP course in any subject, regardless of score.
“Since many AP courses take a year to cover what a college course covers in a semester, it is not like they do not have enough time.”
True, but since HS students are taking more courses at a time I suspect it’s a wash. Yes, college courses move more quickly since they cover the same material in a semester but most college students are only taking 4 or 5 at the most courses at a time so they have more time to devote to the courses they are taking. In our area, HS students are generally taking 7, with some taking 8 courses at a time so have a bit less time to devote to each course.
But AP courses in the sciences are reasonably good preparation for the freshman level Core courses that all students take at Caltech. Of course, Caltech is an outlier in that, so not an especially good example of the issues with AP courses.
From what I’ve heard about my son’s work this year, a student at Caltech would be behind the others if they hadn’t at least taken the equivalent of AP Calc BC (and probably multivariable), AP Physics C (at least one, probably both), AP Chemistry, and AP Comp Sci. It seems that AP Bio is probably not as important, though they do all take a quarter of bio, it seems different and AP Bio is perhaps not a prerequisite.
Yes, he took 14 AP tests (10 classes) and a number of post-AP college courses that he didn’t get “credit” for, but he feels prepared.
The AP courses he took that seemed the most different from real-world college courses were the history courses, because from what I’ve seen, most college history courses don’t try to cover all of history in a 2-semester sequence. They cover some aspect of history or focus on several parts of history that the professor deems important. Courses like APUSH are a mile wide and an inch deep, even with the recent changes.
But, there is perhaps an advantage to knowing a bit about the entire flow of history so that you can then learn more about specifics in college. I worry about the kids here on CC who panic in April because their APUSH class has only covered up through 1960 or so. A lot of things have happened since then that voters should be aware of.
Top Colleges it seems make themselves more prestigious if they don’t accept AP. It also helps their pocketbook too.
You worry about them panicking, or you worry about them not having covered the material?
I get concerned about kids panicking over the AP exam as well, but being in the 1960’s in April seems about right. For most schools, they will have about 30 weeks of instruction before the AP exam. The 1980’s and beyond is about 5% of the exam, so the 1960’s and beyond is probably about 10-15%. So 3-4 weeks is really all that can be devoted to that period. Again, that’s the challenge of the race through the ages approach.
I worry that a class that is supposed to provide an overview of US History did not cover anything that happened in the 50-something years since I was born.
I wasn’t arguing against taking AP courses. If AP courses are the most rigorous courses offered by the HS, take them by all means. But AP courses are nothing special. I’d imagine many Caltech freshmen, for example, would have studied at least some subjects at levels beyond AP courses.
Or maybe it’s because an AP class doesn’t prepare their students for the next level of classes at that college. Don’t assume every course in every school has the same rigor, depth, and/or breadth. They aren’t doing kids a favor by allowing something like AP Chem to replace a year of Gen Chem if they know that it doesn’t prepare them for O-Chem or another high level Chem class.
And many top colleges also administer their own placement exams so that they can better advise incoming students where they best fit. A student may think that a 5 means they can skip a level in an entry level class but the placement test may provide very different information.
I would be interested if these elite high schools are raising their tuition. What is their tuition? As someone said earlier it appears to be the rich that are going their so 5-6 years of college doesn’t really matter to them. Of course you can’t assume that every school has the same rigor but you can’t assume all of them don’t.
Comparable stats for Canada show percentage of students getting a 1 or 2 on the exam at 23.25%. I think one of the big reasons for the lower number is that at many schools access to AP courses is by selection ensuring that only the strongest students are taking the courses. They also often offer an accelerated curriculum beginning in grade 9 such that the students have completed the majority of the high school curriculum before tackling the AP curriculum.
https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/ap-2017
Most high schools here are semestered, my son’s included, so they will be covering the AP curriculum in 1 semester, even those that give 2 semesters worth of transfer credit (like AP Chem and AP Bio). On the other hand, our students take 4 courses per semester vs 5 for the typical university student (or 6 for engineering) and high school semesters are a month longer than university semesters. The only exception is AP courses taken in 2nd semester since the AP exams are in May and our school year runs until the end of June, giving them 1 month less to cover the material.
Our school’s pass rate overall (they offer 29 APs) is 88%
They say that puts them in the top 10% of high schools. So my perception of APs is no doubt quite biased by being in a school that does it well.
As to the mile wide, inch deep issue… that is due to the AP curriculum - not the teacher. When you look at what the college board wants
Teachers have to cover all the possible bases. BTW - the revisions of the last few years have drastically cut the size of curriculum… but there is still a LOT.
Here are the extended response questions from this year. I thought it was a very fair grouping (nothing came from out of left field) But it shows the range of subjects
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap18-frq-us-history.pdf
Is it truly “college level” material … tbh, I don’t think so, but it IS challenging, and does require higher order thinking
AP courses are the equivalent of middling level colleges - which is why it’s fine for very selective colleges to say they aren’t equivalent to their courses.
Any HS school that is taking an entire school year to cover what a college covers in a semester is not preparing students well for the pace of college.
A friend who teaches AP World History mentioned to me that in 2019-20 the course will change from covering 10,000 years of history to 1450-present.
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-world-history/course/2019-20-changes
I think AP classes are a scam and always have been, but especially beginning in the 1980s or so.
As long as alomst all colleges accept some AP credit, those ap courses are at college level. It may be stupid for a high school not offering any AP or IB.
The following AP courses are commonly year-long in high school, even though their material is typically covered in a semester-long course in college:
Calculus AB
Calculus BC at high schools which require completion of AB first
Comparative Government
Computer Science A
Computer Science Principles
Economics - Macro
Economics - Micro
Environmental Science
Human Geography
Physics 1
Physics 2
Physics C Mechanics
Physics C E&M
Psychology
Statistics
US Government
Also, in non-AP courses in other subjects (e.g. precalculus, beginner / intermediate foreign language courses), it is common for a semester-long college course to be roughly equivalent to a year-long high school course.
Which is as it should be. Unfortunately US News now rates high schools based overwhelmingly on how many AP’s their students take. A school scores better if a large percentage of their student body takes multiple AP’s and flunks almost all of them than if they don’t take the test at all. That’s why you don’t see any of the elite private schools on their lists of best schools. Many schools, particularly some charter schools try to bump up their ratings by requiring their students to take AP tests whether or not they’re prepared for them.