<p>"Many AP courses are less rigorous than the college courses that they emulate, because they typically take a year to cover what a college course typically covers in a semester (psychology, calculus AB, statistics, etc.). "</p>
<p>That’s because colleges operate on a semester schedule whereas most high schools operate on a yearlong schedule. A high school class may take a year to cover a college semester’s worth of material, but the high school students may be taking 8 classes simultaneously whereas the college students are usually taking 4-5 per semester. As long as a comparable amount of material is covered in the end, the high school pacing doesn’t mean it’s less rigorous. I do think many of the APs are less rigorous than college classes, but that has more to do with differences such as the expectations for student papers.</p>
<p>@mathyone, my son wondered what AP Calc AB could possibly be doing for a year in HS. Thankfully, his school does Calc AB/BC in a year, so there’s a reduction in busywork and doodling.</p>
<p>@Ixnay, our school requires AB for BC. I was pretty unhappy about that, because I know many schools don’t. The school’s position is that many of the kids in AB are taking 8 classes, and often 5 of them will be AP classes. They think the kids just don’t have time to move as fast as BC would require. I think there’s some truth to this. Kids who are only taking 6 or 7 classes probably have less total homework, or a study hall, or more instructional time, and can better handle a faster-paced class. I’m still not entirely happy about it, but I can say that our AB and BC classes don’t mess around; there is no busywork or doodling. My daughter is a super-serious student who wants to learn in class and hates busywork, and she was happy with the pacing. That’s probably because she took AB as a freshman along with stats. If she hadn’t already been in a math track that was appropriately challenging to her, she probably would also have found it too slow.</p>
<p>@mathyone, perhaps the reason it worked in my son’s school is that one of the truly exceptional teachers taught AB/BC. He has a way of discovering and nurturing budding math intuition in his students. He will be retiring soon, and I can only hope that he is replaced by someone equally gifted at teaching math.</p>
<p>Actually, I think our lead calculus teacher, who teaches both AB and BC, is very good. It’s not a matter of poor teaching. (Though I hear complaints about another teacher doing a terrible job with calculus). But if you have to cover twice the material, you obviously have half the in-class time for each topic, and it’s going to mean more homework. My daughter didn’t get all that much calculus homework.</p>
<p>I wanted to add, we do have a few top math students who feel this pacing is too slow. There are kids doubling up on math classes among precalc, AB, and BC or taking AB and self-studying BC. This is generally happening in the sophomore or junior year. It’s not the best way to learn the material but they aren’t getting the support they need from the school. These are kids who probably should have been tracked like my daughter was, but in recent years new school programs and policies have made it far more difficult for the advanced math kids to accelerate to an appropriately challenging level.</p>
I realize that AP classes are advertised as “college level,” but I’m not so sure that direct comparison of an AP class to a similarly-titled college course is that helpful.</p>
<p>A college professor often has an incredible amount of autonomy over what is taught in a given course. For instance, it’s very common for a professor to dedicate more curricular time to the specific focus of his/her academic research. At the high school level, an AP teacher does not have the same latitude. It’s understood that the students will be taking the AP test in May…so the class must cover the entirety of the AP curriculum.</p>
<p>History classes in college usually require the submission of one or more term papers. In those essays, college students are expected to do research/analysis at a much higher level than high school students (at least that was my experience when I attended college). Obviously, expectations would be different at a run-of-the-mill community college vs. HYPS.</p>
<p>Such variation in topics is likely less in common frosh-level courses within the same college. For example, a college’s math department may have a specific list of topics to be covered in calculus 1 and 2, so that students completing those courses are prepared to take calculus 3, physics, and other courses dependent on calculus 1 and 2.</p>
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<p>However, although topics to be covered are specified for AP courses (and presumably within a college for common frosh-level courses), individual instructors (either in high school AP courses or college courses) could go beyond the minimum specification for the course in terms of depth and rigor.</p>
<p>Of course it is also possible for the instructor to cover the topics of the course inadequately; at the high school AP level, that may be exposed by the A students getting 1 scores on the AP tests.</p>
<p>Relating what I was saying earlier to the OP’s post, it sounds like IB requires a lot of writing. I’d suggest investigating whether that is also true in the equivalent AP classes. Our AP program does nothing to prepare kids for writing college term papers.</p>
<p>Further to mathyone’s point, I think for writing and time management (including the important skill for perfectionists of knowing when “good enough” is reached), IB can be very helpful. For all of our reservations about IB for a science/math kid, IB prepared my son for college level writing and also taught him how to balance the benefits of staying up an additional hour studying/writing versus the benefit of an additional hour’s sleep.</p>
<p>However, the students in a position to take AB and then BC each as a year-long course have to be at least two grades ahead in math (i.e. calculus in 11th grade or earlier). These are the top students in math, for whom calculus at a college or all-of-BC-in-one-year pace would still likely be their easiest course. Remember also that four other AP courses would likely include some of the lighter slow-paced ones, so such a course load would not be like four other college courses.</p>
<p>I’ve also read that it helps to prepare for the format of Subject tests. I’m sure that is it normally the case, but it’s worth taking a pretest before spending much study time. </p>
<p>DS was a bright and dligent IB student, but I was still worried because he didn’t seem to have any time for Subject test prep. Finally he got tired of my pestering. He sat down at the dining room table and took a timed Math2 test… scored 800. Same for Physics. After that I let it go. He scored same on the real tests too.</p>
<p>@ucb, I certainly agree with you that they should offer a one year AB-BC class but, I’m not sure if there are one or two BC sections, probably they don’t think they can offer it both ways.</p>