<p>My daughter took 9 AP classes/exams in varied subjects: World History, Spanish, American Literature, Calculus, Micro and Macro Economics, Psychology, Biology, and Physics. That’s typical for the top students at her competitive, suburban high school. Usually there are 3-4 AP National Scholars out of a class of about 450. Last year there were 11, including my daughter.</p>
<p>With few exceptions, her HS only allows Juniors/Seniors to take AP classes, so many more than 8-9 is rare. I have not heard of students taking online courses. According to information on their web page, the HS offers 26 AP classes (I didn’t know there were so many!).</p>
<p>Only one of four classmates going to UChicago, and one of five going to Northwestern were AP National Scholars. All of those headed for Ivy/Stanford were AP National Scholars. I wouldn’t draw any sweeping conclusions from this limited observation.</p>
<p>My daughter’s college primarily uses AP scores for placement, not credit. She found this to be a mixed blessing: higher placement as a freshman meant a harder course load and scheduling difficulties.</p>
<p>I suspect my daughter could have obtained the same college admissions results with fewer AP classes. Her HS guidance counselor strongly encouraged her to take as many as possible. Now she’s sorry she didn’t take more non AP classes that genuinely interested her instead of listening to her GC and racking up non-applicable AP credits.</p>
<p>I think my sophomore son will have 6 by the time he is done and that is more then his brother or sister, but that’s due to changes at the HS since they graduated. Sophomores at our HS can only take one AP- US History, freshman cannot even take one. I think our school offers a very reasonable approach by limiting the amount of AP’s offered and also having fairly strict prerequisites about who can take them.</p>
<p>The very top academic echelon at our hs takes 6-7 AP classes. More are theoretically possible, but unless a kid takes APs in more than one language (and who does?), or Music Theory or Computer Science (obviously not subjects of interest to every student), that’s the max. </p>
<p>Self-study is possible, and one kid every year usually qualifies for the AP National Scholar award via this route. The requirements for that award are grades of 4 or higher on 8 AP exams. (This student does not necessarily wind up with the most prestigious acceptances at our school, fwiw.) Our hs has a good record of students being accepted at top colleges. So the 10 kids (out of 370) who enrolled in Ivy League schools last fall weren’t accepted because they took a staggering number of AP classes. They, and the other kids at what are considered top schools, usually take a full senior year of college-level classes. Works well here.</p>
<p>At D1’s and S2’s schools, there are dozens of kids who make NMSF and similar numbers who make AP National Scholar. They are almost all in the selective admit specialized programs, which use AP curricula as the minimum level for what they teach. People expect a stellar public education here, and being in a large, suburban system with a highly educated population generates the demand and political will for that. Even the most seriously impacted schools here make the top 1000 list.</p>
<p>Some of the academic pressure is parent-driven, to be sure, but there are also some kids who are so passionate about what they do that all the parents and teachers can do is get out of their way and find them opportunities. </p>
<p>After seeing what our friends and family around the country have available to them (or not), we are extremely thankful for the incredible public education our kids have received.</p>
<p>Our small HS only offers 7 AP classes total, to take only Junior and Senior year. Our problem was in scheduling. The school had a lot of them scheduled at the same period so she could only take 1 her Junior year and is scheduled for 4 as Senior year (if schedule allows!!) This is a little frustrating after seeing what other schools offer. I visited a college this weekend (a top 35 tier I LAC) and asked that question. They said they look at overall picture and not the amount of AP, just so the schedule was challenging.</p>
<p>Among the current senior boys in our neighborhood who attend the local HS, I know of one who took an AP course. All are heading to in-state/nearby four-year schools. (Clarification – our kids did not attend the local HS – they commuted to their HS programs.)</p>
<p>The problem arises when a GC has to indicate the level of rigor a given student pursued at their individual HS. If AP classes are offered and not taken, the GC cannot honestly indicate the student took the most rigorous classes offered. That seems to be important to many top schools. Or at least that’s how it was explained to my daughter, and partly why she took all the AP classes she did.</p>
<p>Just my take, but it’s not the total number of AP’s, it’s the subjects. Check the web sites of the universities of interest to your son. If the university does not offer any college credit for a particular AP subject, then it is unlikely to be weighted very much by admissions. US History, European History, English Literature, English Language (presumably), a foreign language (or more than one), Calculus BC, Physics C (Mechanics and E & M), Chemistry, and Biology are substantial AP’s, in my opinion. Calculus AB is fine for non-math-science types, or if it is all a school offers. Personally, I do not respect the Calculus AB + Calculus BC option, although it would increase the AP count. Physics B does not have much point for a math/science type, and some schools (e.g., MIT) will not give credit for it. I think the content of AP Statistics is actually quite important for understanding the news, but many “top” colleges do not grant credit for it. Of course, Caltech does not grant credit for AP anything!</p>
<p>Music theory, art history and the studio art AP classes would impress me (much more than AP Psych or Environmental Science).</p>
<p>Our school just this year opened up an AP to sophs (US history). My son is in it but daughter isn’t. Next year as juniors son will have AP English, French and European history. Daughter will have AP chemistry, Spanish and economics. They don’t offer AP in any math til senior year. </p>
<p>They need lives too. Life is not just a race to get into HYPSM.</p>
<p>Same here. My kids managed to squeeze in two APs in four years and either graduated from or are now at top LACs. During the entire application/interview process, no one ever mentioned that they thought the lack of APs was in any way a drawback. In fact, I thought two APs were perfectly normal until I started reading CC threads! :)</p>
<p>Also, if a given school limits AP to 3 classes per year for juniors and seniors, then at that school 6 APs is not the norm; it’s the maximum. The norm for bright kids might be less. What if the school offers AP in French and Spanish but not Latin? The bright kid who takes Latin and does well is hardly a slacker. </p>
<p>Your “norm” is a) based on schools that offer tons of APs and b) is predicated on the belief that everyone is seeking top 20 school admittance. </p>
<p>What if your kid just took a handful of APs and went to Ohio State?</p>
<p>I know of no reason why this would be true. Often, a college does not offer credit for an AP subject because the AP course is not sufficiently similar to the college’s own introductory course in the subject to serve as an appropriate prerequisite for higher-level courses. This does not mean that the AP course is without value and that it would not count toward the “rigorous curriculum” that colleges want to see.</p>
<p>For the record: </p>
<p>My son, in a “regular” high school in the same system as Counting Down’s kids, took 4 AP courses, took all 4 AP tests, and scored well enough on 3 of the 4 to get credit/advanced placement at his college (our state flagship university). This served him well toward the end of college, when having those AP credits enabled him to take only 12 credits in each of his last three semesters so that he could devote more time to research. </p>
<p>My daughter, in a selective IB program in the same system, took 8 AP tests (some after AP courses; some after IB courses), and scored well enough on all 8 to get credit at her college (a top-20 private university), and (more importantly) to place out of all of the prerequisites for her major, as well as a freshman writing course that she did not want to take. She will not use her AP credits to graduate early because that would limit her opportunity to take electives that are important to her. However, she did greatly appreciate being able to start on the upperclass courses in her major in her first semester, and we believe that the fact that she is more advanced in her major than most other sophomores played an important role in getting her an excellent internship for this coming summer.</p>
<p>In comparison with their high school classmates, both of my kids were slight slackers in the AP department. Many of their friends, in each of their respective schools, had one or two more APs than they did. And (sorry if this horrifies you, QuantMech), my son took AP Psychology and my daughter took AP Environmental Science, both of which are indeed among the easier APs out there. Nobody (not even their guidance counselors) ever criticized them for it.</p>
<p>I agree with Marian’s comment that admissions would still give weight to AP courses for which the college does not award credit, if it’s just that the AP courses don’t match sufficiently well with the college’s introductory courses, to provide a basis for more advanced work. AP Biology comes to mind as a possible example of this, where there can be a mismatch.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a few of the AP courses strike me as AP-lite–but which ones are “lite” could vary a lot from high school to high school. (Marian: I don’t mean to be “horrified” by AP Psych–I think it would be very interesting, and even “fun.” No reason not to take it, if it fits into a sensible schedule overall. My intention is not to be an AP-snob. I just think that the students with 27 AP’s had to take a few that didn’t make much sense for them.) </p>
<p>As a separate issue, many high schools pile demands on their AP students, when the demands are far from necessary for the students to do well on the AP exams–in fact, far from necessary, even to have one of the higher 5’s on the exam. Is the school that has 2 hours of homework per night per AP an example of this? (Can’t tell from the information posted.) The 2 hours per night could be very well spent, in terms of the educational return, if the teacher is good and/or the student is clever. Otherwise, it could be about 1/2 hour of worthwhile effort plus 1 and 1/2 hours of largely wasteful effort, that yields little additional learning. . . or anywhere in between.</p>
<p>The high schools and their AP courses are so different, it’s hard to give generally applicable guidelines.</p>
<p>To react to the comment that it’s “not a race” to get into HYPS, etc., I agree! But I think that the posters with this view either have much better regular high school classes than we do locally, or they have <em>much</em> more time-consuming AP’s. The nature and utility of AP’s vary a lot from school to school and from AP to AP, and there are also large variations in the regular curricular alternatives.</p>
<p>O.k. Got a pretty wide range of "norm"s. Per my understanding, smart kids will be bored if there is not any advanced classes - AP, IB or what have you. So, the reason they take 5 or 7 AP is really, in my opinion, to get challenged. It does not hurt if there is any other benefits come alone with that. At least for our kids, it is not like “I must take N AP to get into good college”. </p>
<p>Will there be a negative thing if the HS offers 20 AP and the student only takes 3? </p>
<p>BTW, I don’t think taking 5 or 6 AP a year is not that difficult. Both DD and DS have plenty of time to do sports and other EC.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on where you are. Some areas of the country have an AP “arms race” going on. D’s school is a perfect example. Her GC will not check off “most rigorous” despite the fact that D will have 7 APs by graduation, not to mention all honors except for required courses.</p>
<p>It’s OK though, her test scores guarantee she won’t get into a “top” school anyway. It should be noted that the “AP collectors” in her classes call her for help with their homework and studying.</p>
<p>Love the term “AP arms race”, Queen’s Mom…D1 was in a competitive public and that term definitely applied, although with her 6 AP’s, (and no undue stress with them), she was termed “most rigorous”…the scheduling did not allow more, and we had no idea about self-study until we started reading CC…kinda happy we didn’t know though…</p>
<p>D2 is in a private; No AP’s allowed before senior year except US History (10 kids) and only 3-4 offered senior year, only for those students who achieved A’s in all previous honors courses; um, no, we don’t have to worry about that…</p>
<p>Just to clarify, when I wrote about wasteful effort, I meant work that does not lead to additional learning. Effort that is not needed for a “high 5” (and that might qualify a student for a score of “9” or “15,” if the AP went that high) is not wasteful, as long as the student is learning or growing in proportion to the effort expended. Even memorizing the names of Milliard Fillmore’s cabinet secretaries might be worthwhile, in some contexts. </p>
<p>By “wasteful effort,” I have in mind duplicative work in math or sciences (e.g., hundreds of problems designed to make a student a tenth of a second faster at changing variables in integration), artistic poster production outside of art classes, building sculpted sugar-cube models of the Jefferson Memorial with Jefferson carved from Ivory soap and all of the engravings on the actual memorial etched on the inside, or semi-authentically replicating shirts of the Revolutionary War era, using hand-combed, hand-spun cotton, hand-weaving the cloth, and then staining the shirt with mud actually collected at Valley Forge–and don’t get me started on whale-bone buttons! . . . If your child has been in such a class, you know what I’m talking about.</p>
<p>So much depends on school system. I doubt out HS will ever be in top 1000 list. The dozen APs S had by end of jr year placed him with better peer group (academically) and often experienced teachers. Even so, he seemed to prefer the 12 college classes he took, even tho our local U is NEVER mentioned on CC. He would have been considered a transfer student if he stayed around for senior year.</p>
<p>In short, no way could our HS compare to some schools that seem so rigorous. I’m glad they were flexible with some rules. The real challenges began in college.</p>
<p>QM–Don’t forgot the reproduction of Globe Theatre!</p>
<p>My son goes to a school that sends an embarrassingly high percentage of its students to Ivy League schools. Students are RARELY if ever allowed to take AP courses before junior year (honors and challenge courses–yes) APs no and then are discouraged from taking more than two per year. My son will have 4.</p>
<p>One thing I find bizarre about CC is how stuck in the formulaic groove folks get. When you say things like standardized scores will make up only a third or a portion of your application and chances of being admittted or you can get into Harvard with 2 APS, they are either incredulous or frantically in denial. </p>
<p>There is no norm because high school curricula, requirements and standards vary widely across this nation. Recognize that admissions offices are fairly savvy places. They keep records on high schools where they recruit and from where they draw most of their kids. They know the caliber of courses and teachers. Often, they know your schools. An A at one school is not an A at another. A child who takes 2 AP classes in a large public high school where 15 are available will be viewed more critically than one who takes 2 where only 6 are available.</p>