<p>Just throwing out that this is a seven year old thread.</p>
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<li>i know this is a thread for forever ago</li>
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<p>2.
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<p>As an IB Diploma kid, from my experience what gives is that the students don’t do all the work that is assigned. I took English tests on books that I hadn’t read. Sometimes the homework for classes in the afternoon wasn’t finished until lunch time. Sometimes you got some significant “help” on the homework from other students, which was then paid back at another time. The kids that take schedules like this also seem to have time consuming ECs (sports, music, etc) and you can’t really skip on those. My classmates and I were routinely up until 12/1/2am in high school.</p>
<p>That said, 7 classes x 2 hours a day = 14 hrs/day of hw. Obviously kids are not doing anywhere near that much. 7 x 1 hour a day is probably towards the high end of the hours actually spent doing hw.</p>
<p>I went to a college that is generally thought to be pretty rigorous and it was a lot less work than high school for me. Not that exam time wasn’t super stressful or things like that, but the day to day work was a lot more manageable (and you are only in class for 2-5 hours a day instead of 8)</p>
<p>To put it in perspective, a typical 4-credit college course over a semester is supposed to take about 12 hours per week (in and out of class) over 15 weeks, for a total of 180 hours (in and out of class). However, actual college workloads are probably only about 2/3 of that, or 8 hours per week (in and out of class), for a total of 120 hours.</p>
<p>If an AP course is equivalent to a year long sequence of courses (e.g. calculus BC in one year for students who just completed precalculus), then it can be expected to be about 240 hours of work total. If it is equivalent to just a semester long course (e.g. a lot of AP courses like calculus AB, statistics, chemistry, each half of physics C, world history, human geography, psychology, etc.), then it can be expected to be about 120 hours of work total. Of course, some AP courses attempt to emulate what are ordinarily considered easy college courses (e.g. statistics, human geography, psychology), so they would be even less work.</p>
<p>You can then divide the number of hours of work in these estimates by the number of days of instruction at the high school to get an estimate of the amount of time per day (in and out of class) the student may be expected to spend on an AP course.</p>
<p>Re: IB</p>
<p>Seems that IB is commonly reported to be a lot more workload, although not necessarily that much more learned in terms of what colleges are willing to give credit for.</p>
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<p>When I was attending my NYC public magnet high school, the common joke underlying the reality of our workload among all students was “Academics, friends, sleep…pick two.”</p>
<p>Students on the non-AP track tend to average about 4-7 of homework/studying per day. I knew no one except the extreme literal geniuses* whose bedtimes were earlier than midnight on the non-AP track and 3-4 am if taking a heavy load of APs. If it was midterms/finals periods, non-AP track kids would stay up till 3-4 am and many AP kids would pull literal all-nighters. </p>
<p>As someone who struggled in my HS’ non-AP track, I pulled a few all-nighters back then. </p>
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<li>My salutatorian friend who ended up at MIT and graduated in 4 years near the top of his graduating class with a BS and MS in EE. Continued to maintain a sleep time no later than 11 pm in college/grad school.<br></li>
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<p>College at my top 30 LAC was not only far less work than HS and more manageable day-to-day, I also had the odd feeling of feeling very little stress during college exams/papers. Heck, I actually enjoyed most of them. This also manifest itself in how within one semester at college, I had the odd feeling of adjusting from being the class dunce to being regarded as one of the most engaged and informed students by Profs and other classmates despite my argumentative contrariness. Even fell into a long-running tutoring gig which helped cover what my near-full ride didn’t cover. </p>
<p>Never pulled an all-nighter in college despite maxing out my course credits each semester until senior year when I had enough credits to shift down my semester credit load. </p>
<p>In contrast, during HS, I was living in the fear of barely keeping my head above academic water…especially during my first two years and being labeled as a class dunce.</p>
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<p>The numbers of hours someone needs to study for a class to get a good grade depends on how much the teacher assigns but also on how smart the person is. Discussions of how many hours a week a class takes often ignore this consideration.</p>
<p>This thread is SEVEN years old!!</p>
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<p>I agree that IB seems to be more work and less college credit. IB kids should sign up for the AP exams for all of their classes… but IB exams all have 2-3 session over 2-3 weeks, so adding AP exams on top of that is a lot.</p>
<p>ps does anyone know how old this thread is?</p>
<p>Many topics of discussion at CC, including the workload of AP courses, are topics of ongoing interest. I don’t see the advantage of having dozens of threads on the same topic over having one long-running thread on that topic.</p>
<p>Your son signed up for a college level course so he should definitely expect a large workload. This is to prepare the AP students for AP testing in May.</p>
<p>NOTE the past post dates, folks. One old comment about a FIVE year old thread…</p>