<p>Hi, hi, hi. Last night I was reading the blog, Carl Me, that dietcokelime kindly introduced to this forum, and I encountered the bit about new changes in Carleton's graduation requirement. </p>
<p>" - Students required to spend senior year on campus.
- At least 198 of 210 credits must be earned from Carleton courses. This means nobody will be coming in with 50 credits from AP tests.</p>
<p>The last two changes are designed to make the graduation policy more equitable. Students from privileged backgrounds who were able to take a bunch of AP tests currently have the option of graduating early and saving $30,000. Under the new requirements, this wouldn’t be possible. "</p>
<p>So... I guess I'm wondering what is the thought of Carleton behind these changes? I mean, I don't know much about College Graduation Requirements as a prospective student, so please educate me. </p>
<p>I always thought easy AP credits and early graduation(opportunity to save mad $$$) were good things?!
What are the benefits of staying throughout the full four years?
Is Carleton's credit policy harsher or more lenient compared to other schools?
Basically, doing well at high school and nailing 5 on AP doesn't help you at the end... is that right? </p>
<p>*** Also, WHAT IS that bit about "students from privileged backgrounds"?</p>
<p>I believe Carleton only accepts a max of 36 credits of AP.</p>
<p>These clips make me wonder what is considered "senior year." If you have enough credits can you still finish a term early? I wonder if it's more aimed at stopping folks who leave without enough credits and then finish up somewhere else and transfer credits back in to graduate.</p>
<p>I'll be interested to here others insights.</p>
<p>OK, I've read a bit more about it - there are 3 proposals being discussed by the Education and Curriculum Committee, but I couldn't find details on them.<br>
The requirement to spend senior year on campus appears to have been in place (it's on the main website under grad requirements) and it defines senior year as "last three academic terms" so it would seem that you can still finish early, particularly if you come in with several courses worth of AP and especially if you do a semester off-campus program during a fall term (it just can't be your senior fall term).</p>
<p>I don't know the answers to some of your questions, but I can speak personally about the disadvantage of graduating early. I graduated early from a different school, in large part due to AP credits, and regret it to this day. The undergrad experience is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I cut mine short. While my friends were continuing to take interesting, higher level courses and taking advantage of all that college offers, I was working in a mall.</p>
<p>As for the AP courses, it seems to me that as a general rule, state schools offer the most credit in return for qualifying grades on the tests. On the other end of the spectrum is a school like Yale that gives you NO credit for AP courses. </p>
<p>The huge advantage to taking APs, beyond making yourself more marketable to colleges, is that you are usually able to bypass the introductory courses in college and start in higher level, more interesting classes. Over the course of 4 years, you are able to take courses that you wouldn't necessarily have had the opportunity to take had you not taken AP courses.</p>
<p>so basically, APs let you pass up on the couple intros , but they are not helpful for graduating the school itself. Is that right?
The part about rich kids taking lots of APs bother me extremely - because it's confusing. Someone please comment on that!!</p>
<p>I think that the best answer to your question would come from the admissions office. It's their job to have an accurate answer for you. Why don't you give them a call and then let us know what the answer is. I'm curious too!</p>
<p>The trend for the past several years at most upper tier schools has been to restrict using AP's to allow for either early graduation or placement out of distribution requirements. Several colleges are now allowing only 5's for credit and not granting any for specific tests, e.g. econ, Calc AB, etc. Pomona has been pretty tough in this regard with their president arguing that AP coursework is generally not on par with college course offerings. They only allow kids credit for up to 2 APs making early graduation virtually impossible.</p>
<p>Amherst and Williams policies are even more restrictive, refusing to give credit for APs at all. APs are solely used to allow placement into higher level courses. </p>
<p>I know that Carleton's active policy (this applies to ALL currently enrolled students) allows for up to 2 trimesters of credit for APs (thereby allowing for graduation 2 terms early). It sounds as though they are considering revising this policy to allow for only up to one term of credit bringing it more in line with peer schools. Obviously no way to know if this will ever happen. Don't really see it as an issue. Very few kids choose, even if able, to push up graduation by more than one term, if at all. </p>
<p>I'd certainly agree with Mmomm's very good reasons why NOT to graduate early. Admittedly, financial considerations, especially these days, may force one's hand.</p>
<p>You're not allowed to do a term abroad in your senior year? Wow. There's a program that my son was very interested in, although, because it happens only every three years and it fell in spring of his freshman year last year and will occur next in his senior year, he had pretty much decided against. However, if you're not even allowed to study abroad senior year, then that wasn't his decision to make.</p>
<p>This doesn't seem right, since many students wait until after soph. year to go abroad.</p>
<p>Limner, I believe the proposal, if adopted, would apply to future classes. The general rule is that students follow the requirements listed in the catalog in their year of entry (for your son, the catalog of 08-09).</p>
<p>Thanks ffs and 1190. My son will get one term abroad, at the very least, since he's heading to London for the winter. It just seemed a tad bizarre not to let seniors go abroad. Glad that's been cleared up!</p>
"Students from privileged backgrounds who were able to take a bunch of AP tests currently have the option of graduating early and saving $30,000. Under the new requirements, this wouldnt be possible. "
[...]
I always thought easy AP credits and early graduation(opportunity to save mad $$$) were good things?!
What are the benefits of staying throughout the full four years?
Is Carleton's credit policy harsher or more lenient compared to other schools?
Basically, doing well at high school and nailing 5 on AP doesn't help you at the end... is that right?</p>
<p>*** Also, WHAT IS that bit about "students from privileged backgrounds"?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think the idea here is that students who went to solid high schools that offered many APs and prepared them well enough to get 5's are coming in with a lot of prior credits and maxing out Carleton's current limit of 36 credits. These students have numerous advantages over their peers who come from ****tier high schools and aren't as prepared for Carleton. Being able to graduate two terms earlier is a privilege that students from rich high schools have that students from poor high schools do not, generally speaking. Eliminating the graduation timing advantage reduce this inequity between students of different pre-Carleton backgrounds.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings on this proposal. On one hand, I agree that it's unfair that some students can graduate faster simply by virtue of simply having gone to a better high school. (You were expected to take the hardest classes you could to get admitted here, so it's not so much how many you chose to take, but whether your situation allowed you take 1 or 2 or 10. That's why this is about privilege and not choices.) AP classes are easier than Carleton coursework and that even a 4 or a 5 on an AP test doesn't clearly demonstrate anything equivalent to the understanding you would have from taking the same class at Carleton. Carleton classes are for the most part just that much harder and faster than what the AP curriculum and testing demands, and require much more demonstration of clear reasoning and less memorization. On the other hand, students coming from good high schools are on less financial aid than students from ****ty schools, and lots of them have to pay the full amount. Being able to cut out 2 of the 12 terms of tuition is a decent amount of savings for families that are well-off but still have trouble coming up with $50K each year to hand over to Carleton, and I do not begrudge these families from taking advantage of the situation.</p>
<p>What you really have to understand is that Carleton students are more sensitive to privilege than students from similar schools on the coasts. You don't see many fancy cars, branded clothes and accessories, expensive stereo systems, etc., and people really do frown upon ostentatious displays of wealth. The mentality has long been about egalitarianism. You don't pay to participate in most clubs/events on campus. Many students do work-study and there's no stigma about having a campus job. If you went to a private school, you don't talk about it much. Not much discussion about parental jobs at all, though if you dare to ask you will find out that many students are the children of lawyers, professors, and doctors. Between this tendency towards egalitarianism and the results of the campus climate survey, I can see why officials would want to eliminate the AP credit policy.</p>