<p>I was wondering your opinions on the ideal number of AP courses a school should offer. I am starting to have doubts about the "the more the better" mantra that seems prevalent today. We know that admissions officers judge students based on what courses were available at their school and how did the student max out his curriculum. Is a school putting undue stress on its students if it offers 19 AP courses as opposed to 7 or 8? Will their students have enough time to distinguish themselves in their extracurricular activities if every course they are taking is an AP course? Are AP courses really college level if students are taking them as freshmen or sophomores?</p>
<p>There are APs in many different fields, from history and the sciences to languages to music & art. I think a HS should offer all that it can reasonably teach or have demand for. We are lucky at our HS that there is a wide variety of APs. I don’t know which ones we would delete to get the number down to 7 or 8.</p>
<p>A couple of my kids took all the APs they could across the board, while the other 2 took mostly the math/science/CS ones. And my one S took CS as a freshman. He was more than ready for it (had already held a summer job in the field) and now works for one of the well-known companies. Extremely well-known. :)</p>
<p>I realize some kids may feel pressure to take “all” APs, but as I indicated above, 2 of mine opted out of AP English. It just wasn’t their thing. YMMV</p>
<p>Our local HS offers 17 AP classes, but even the top students rarely take more than 7. Part of this is because students are only able to take one of the four AP foreign language options.Students who take AP Calc (both AB and BC are offered) rarely take AP Computer Science, etc.</p>
<p>No one is allowed to take AP as a freshman. The only AP offered to sophomores is AP World History. Almost no one takes both AP Lang & AP Lit because those classes are only open to Seniors and few students want to “double up”.</p>
<p>The fact that there are so many AP offerings is good in that it gives students some options, but the students in this school don’t typically load up that much on them.</p>
<p>So much depends on how large the school is, the resources the school has, how homogenious the school is, whether their are kids who really want to take the courses but can’t fit it in due to huge demand & other factors. My S was happy his HS offered a pretty large range of AP courses & he took as many has he was interested in that he could fit into his schedule. D didn’t take ANY APs–different kids, different needs. Her friends took some AP courses.</p>
<p>When there are scarce resources and a huge range of abilities at the school, I would question spending a huge portion of the school budget on offering ever-increasing # of APs for fewer students rather spending on something that might help out more of the students.</p>
<p>The ideal number is 31. Everyone should take the ones they want to, and should not take any others. The idea that schools should get rid of APs because kids will stress themselves out too much by taking too many is a beyond absurd argument.</p>
<p>Is this some sort of “let’s talk about this idea” thread, or is this your actual opinion?</p>
<p>Our school offers 24 (I think) but it’s a big school. It’s impossible to take them all - lots meet at the same time or are only open to certain classes. I think most top kids take between 5 and 10.</p>
<p>We’ve got:
AP World (only sophomores)
AP US History (only juniors)
AP Languages - French, Latin, Spanish and Italian (only open to the end of the sequence - generally seniors)
AP Calculus AB or BC - can’t take both
AP Eng Lang (only juniors)
AP Eng Lit (only seniors)
AP Physics B (mostly honors level sophomores)</p>
<p>We have the big three sciences, plus AP Environ, AP Art, AP Music Theory, AP Comp Sci (both levels in the same classroom), AP Euro, AP Gov, AP Stats (most years), AP Econ (Macro only). Those are the ones I know about. We are a very large school so it’s generally not a problem to get enough bodies. I like having lots of choices. Older son took lots of sciences, younger son is going for the history courses, but has taken a couple of science APs as well.</p>
<p>Like Mommusic’s son, my oldest also took AP Comp Sci as a freshman and was more than ready for it. He’s not working yet, but interned last year for a well known company. 
(He and his brother also refused to take AP English courses.)</p>
<p>Our high school offers a fairly small number of APs BUT lots of students take college classes.
This is probably why the high school does not bother offering more. In other words, it really depends on each situation. I can see that a school that is not as conveniently located as ours might want to offer more if it had the resources and there was demand. It does not mean that students should take as many as possible.</p>
<p>Cost and logistics aside, offer lots of variety but limit how many one can take. </p>
<p>At D’s school, a highly competitive prep school, they can offer a challenging curriculum to everyone yet they purposefully limit the options to just a few APs, no ability to accelerate, or go outside the school to move up. Not so possible in a more diverse public school…but maybe if the overall quality of public education went up, this AP stuff would not be necessary. </p>
<p>I used to find it frustrating but now it all makes sense. The kids have a truly balanced life, room for lots of stuff, not a lot of stress…zero ‘arms race’ going on…When else are you a teenager? They also don’t rank for the same reason. And they require students to take ‘fun electives’ in the senior years to round out their development. Everyone takes a spare in senior year. And they don’t seem at all disadvantaged to their choice of colleges at all. </p>
<p>As the school says, “AP is just another business” and I completely agree. They just don’t buy into it.</p>
<p>LOL. “AP is just another business.”</p>
<p>But they’re cheaper than prep school tuition. You pays your money & you takes your choice.</p>
<p>D. (college junior) found out that what HS kid attended makes much more difference in college preparation than number of AP’s. Apparently colleges are aware of it also. D. had very few AP’s in her school, Freshmen were not allowed to take any and they could not take more than some number (3 ?) per year. However, her level of preparation after Honors classes was significantly better than most others after AP’s. Profs noticed that also and one of them hired D. as assistant (she never had AP version of this class).</p>
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<p>Agreed. Unfortunately some high schools don’t have the resources to offer students many (or any) of these opportunities.</p>
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<p>Disagreed. Students should be allowed to take as many as they want and can handle (same with dual credit classes and other college-level classes - I am not saying that APs should be the only way). The school should be enabling students who want to challenge themselves, not restricting them. Students and their parents should have the good sense and maturity to know what they can handle.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>In many schools and in large portions of the country, APs are the best options available for students. They are a <em>privilege</em> to have available in these schools/regions, and their level of challenge is not something to take for granted. People who complain about AP “arms races”, kids losing balance in their lives, the sacrifice of even better classes, the pressures of admission to top colleges, and so on, need to realize that they are in a bubble.</p>
<p>I was in what was arguably the best high school in Kentucky, and APs were still usually the best option around, something to help our best students be competitive with the best students in other states that historically have stronger educational traditions. I took lots of them, starting my freshman year (as well as a dual credit class and a grad class at the local state school). Because I wanted to be able to compete with strong students from educationally stronger states. The fact that my school offered so many of them was a wonderful opportunity.</p>
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Well, I would have avoided that school like the pest for my S! He absolutely needed to go outside the school starting in 9th grade (and no, we were not tempted to send him to college at 14).</p>
<p>Just as an amusing related aside …</p>
<p>My S went on a college interview last week. When the interview inquired how many AP classes he had taken/was taking, he said he fumbled around a moment trying to list them. It’s 10, plus two college level math classes. If he could go back and do it again, he might have dropped by to honors level for a social studies or English class or two.</p>
<p>Our HS has decided to eliminate AP courses in lieu of creating their own rigorous “5” level classes (distinction previously given to APs). Courses are being vetted by peers and college professors from places such as NYU and Brown, and teachers are providing limited, voluntary afterschool prep classes for students who want to sit for the AP exams in the relevant subjects. The HS did a pretty comprehensive survey of colleges to which the kids most commonly apply to determine whether it would adversely affect the kids in college admissions, and were assured that it wouldn’t. This is not a denigration of APs, I think that they provide a real purpose for many students at many high schools. The “right” number should be the number that can be offered by qualified teachers who are willing to teach the classes. Whether there should be gatekeeping for the classes is another subject for another day. But offering AP classes without teachers qualified to teach the classes is worse than not offering them at all.</p>
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<p>Only if the kids try to take all 19. But as others have noted, AP courses are in different disciplines. Then, how does one count Calc AB vs Calc BC? (Obviously, two separate AP courses, but many HS do not offer AB alone.)</p>
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<p>In our district, kids do both EC’s and AP’s. Standard senior load for the top kids (aiming for Berkeley, UCLA and top privates) is 5 AP’s. Some take six, some take 3-4. </p>
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<p>Our HS curriculum precludes AP courses in Frosh & Soph years for nearly everybody. The only exceptions are for those advanced in math (and can take Stats) or who take Art History or Music Theory as a Soph elective.</p>
<p>But, remember, the AP academic advisory panel includes college professors, and they provide guidance to the curriculum. Thus, the curriculum is supposed to cover college material. Our AP Physics course uses the exact same physics text as that used by Harvard and UC Berkeley.</p>
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<p>Many colleges offer different flavors of freshman physics. The tougher one at Harvard (Physics 16) required an AP-Physics score of 5. S took Intro Bio instead of AP-Bio because of schedule conflict. The textbooks were indeed the same. But Intro Bio took much less time to cover the same materials. This may be why some students who did well in AP classes can find themselves struggling in college: it’s not so much the materials per se, but the quicker pace and the lesser support from teachers.</p>
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<p>The same could be said for the difference between MIT/Caltech and Juco state.</p>
<p>But the point was that the AP curriculum is designed by college professors. Perhaps not Harvard professors, but college professors just the same. And, the texts can be/are the same.</p>
<p>I actually met one prof who was instrumental in devising an AP-curriculum (not a Harvard prof, but certainly a very distinguished prof at a distinguished LAC). Depending on the subject, the textbooks may be the same or they may not. </p>
<p>I have no idea whether MIT/Caltech cover exactly the same materials as Juco state. I do know that at Harvard, the different flavors of math and physics cover different amounts of materials over the same period.</p>
<p>As I posted, S’s college Intro-Bio used the same textbook as the AP-Bio class. But let’s take his college year. Each semester had 13 weeks. So his year long college course met for 26 weeks for three hours each week. Compare that with his high school year that went from Labor Day to May (actually June, but the AP exams happen in May). AP classes at our high school were held four days a week (double periods for lab science classes). This represents at least six more weeks of classes and substantially more hours of instruction per week.</p>
<p>Our HS offered many APs (not sure of exact number), and some students self-studied and took AP tests on top of that.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen in my kids’ 3 graduating classes, among the top students, there was no difference in college admissions between those with 7-8 AP credits and those with 12-15.</p>
<p>How could a kid take 3 APs or more, in a year, with all the required classes ?
Don’t you need 4 years of Math, Engl., Hist., science and PE, 3 years of Lang., 2 years of Art. In our case, one year of religion and a life skills type class are also required.
FWIW kids can’t take more than 6 classes at our HS.</p>