<p>At my school in order to take AP classes, you need to take a qualifying test (and score above a certain percentage, which varies from class to class), a teacher recommendation, and qualifying grades from the past year or 2. I have heard that at other schools there is no qualifying exams. I'm just wondering how other schools do the AP process, reply with how your school does it.</p>
<p>In my school you request to take an AP class and are given the course. There are really no requirements. But the AP teachers may recommend a student drop out if the course is too difficult for him/her. </p>
<p>My school is small though. There are only 200 kids in my class and in my AP classes, there are 14 in AP Economics, ~20 in AP chemistry, 11 in AP calc BC, ~30 in AP lit, and 2 in AP Physics C, so placement tests/requirements are not really necessary. I know some of the bigger high schools in my county require a certain grade to take say AP calc BC, which is the top 30 kids, only, with the highest grade in Precalc H, to name 1 requirement.</p>
<p>Qwert: unfortunately, your school is like our public…make sure your school profile reflects the difficulty when applying to colleges…</p>
<p>In california that would supposedly be illegal (or at least in my district) so teachers resort to doing a scary meeting before you sign up and make the first week extra hard to get unqualified students to drop.</p>
<p>Some high schools in California have stated policies like “to enroll in AP calculus BC, you must have had at least a B- in honors precalculus, an A- in regular precalculus, or a passing grade in AP calculus AB”.</p>
<p>Teacher recommendations, counselor approval, and qualifying grades.</p>
<p>No requirements at our school to sign up - but scary noises from the admin that if you are doing poorly, you won’t be allowed to drop it until the end of the semester. </p>
<p>One reason for that is that studies have found that requiring a ‘teacher recommendation’ to take AP generally means that minorities are disproportionately discouraged from taking the challenging courses. At our large public high school, the staff is very sensitive about not discouraging anyone who says they are committed to doing the work. Occasionally, there are complaints that the result is ‘watered down’ AP classes - teaching to the class mean. But the AP test scores pretty much tell the story: If the majority of the class is passing with a 3 or higher, then the policy seems reasonable. However, there are high school in our metro area that offer AP and most of the class doesn’t pass, which says there are problems, either with the teaching or with those who enroll in the class or both.</p>
<p>Our school district has open enrollment for Honors and AP. If the student wants to sign up, they sign up. If the teacher thinks the student should move up to Honors/AP they pester the student until the student signs up or can present a good argument for not taking the more demanding class. At Happykid’s school, I think everyone including the maintenance staff was part of the “take the tougher class” dragnet. By and large, students do rise to the expectations.</p>
<p>For honor’s and AP courses at my school, there are no qualifying exams. There are teacher recommendations that the counselors look at and advise the student on, but technically, the student can take whatever they want to take. And there are about 550 people in my class, at a public high school. Most teachers’ recommendations are based off of grades and how they see you in class. Obviously, if you got a D or an F in a class, it’s advisable to avoid that AP course. But tons of people with C’s in Pre-Calc/Trig (Honors and regular) ended up taking BC Calculus. And mind you, teacher recommendations are not always accurate. I had an A last year in Honors Pre-Calc/Trig, but BC Calculus is, erm, quite difficult for me. I think we should have a slightly stricter system since students can still sign up for AP’s they weren’t recommended for.</p>
<p>My School really does a common sense thing. (we have a like 30% AP pass rate… -.-)</p>
<p>If you want to take the Sophomore AP (APUSH) they look @ your gpa, explore score and if a teacher agrees. </p>
<p>for Junior AP’s They look at PLAN score, gpa, teacher rec</p>
<p>for senior AP’s They looked at practice ACT scores (my school hosted during school day), gpa, teacher etc.</p>
<p>This thread is one of the reasons why I hope my kids eventually raise my future grandchildren in the lovely state of Maryland and not here in New Jersey…</p>
<p>This is my main Pet peeve about college admissions actually…</p>
<p>How would colleges assess rigor in the different scenarios if the school profile does not reflect the difficulty in taking honors and AP courses?</p>
<p>I would love to see a profile that does…please PM me if you have one that goes in to detail from a high school that has strict enrollment procedures for honors and AP classes…</p>