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<p>that’s assuming that all freshmen operate at the same level. In college, freshmen may find themselves taking the same classes as graduating seniors. No one thinks it’s strange. No reason to find that strange in high school, either.</p>
<p>I think that the fact that my high school offers very few AP courses (and you can only take 8 throughout your high school career) puts me at a distinct disadvantage. I understand that you express concern that 19 APs would put an incredible amount of pressure on students, but there are some students that would greatly benefit from this number.</p>
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<p>The same can be said for students taking AP Chem, AP Bio (1,000+ pages of text?), and AP Physics B, but yet none of those courses are taught over two years!</p>
<p>"How could a kid take 3 APs or more, in a year, with all the required classes ?>></p>
<p>DD is taking AP Lit, AP Bio, AP Calc BC, AP Gov, along with Spanish 4 and two other classes. The four “core” subjects are all AP.</p>
<p>I’m taking 5 AP’s right now (Calc BC, Physics B, Computer Science, Government, Literature) and I don’t think it’s unmanagable; I actually wish I was taking more (my school doesn’t offer Macro/Micro, many of the languages, etc.) I am convinced that more AP’s would have helped in the college application process.</p>
<p>bluebayou:</p>
<p>I have no way of comparing the relative difficulty of different subjects. Fwiw, S found BC Calc and AP-Physics a breeze and Bio a pain. That’s because he’s never been good at memorizing. But it seems that he is in the minority in thinking that Calc is wayyy easier than Bio.
So I will defer to those who think that there is good reason to offer two versions of Calc, AB and BC, with the idea that some need a whole year to cover AB and some don’t.</p>
<p>AP Calc AB is for people who are going to major in non-science/math subject. AP Calc BC is for people who are going to major in hardcore math or engineering.</p>
<p>I disagree, columbia-student. Many social sciences require the level of Calc thru BC, particularly for those students who intend on graduate work. BC is not even close to “hardcore,” particularly with such a high rate of 5’s.</p>
<p>haha i wasn’t sure which to take so like an idiot i took BC. haha.</p>
<p>Blue, maybe those students took Calc at college but not at high school.</p>
<p>pullinghair, responding to your post 20:</p>
<p>I don’t know about all publics. I know that at many privates, students who can manage are taking hard-core classes from 7:30 am to 3:15 pm with 30 minutes for lunch, and in some cases lunch is during a class. Eight or nine classes a day on some days, + block scheduling, makes it possible to do all the requirements as well.</p>
<p>(and add to that what bluebayou said about the overlap. AP’s fulfill many of those listed requirements.)</p>
<p>bluebayou:</p>
<p>The students who take BC Calc and also take the exam are a highly self-selected group, so your argument about 5s is unconvincing.</p>
<p>Years ago, I came across a news item about a very competitive CA school that held a week-end camp for its students who were about to take the AB test but not the BC test. A friend of mine was upset that the camp was not opened to BC students until she saw the test scores of AB and BC students: The BC students were already strong enough on their own that they needed no further coaching. Not so the AB students. </p>
<p>S1 did just fine in college without taking Calc in any flavor. I wish, however, that he had taken AP-Stats but it was not offered at our school. His GC pushed mightily for him to take AP-Calc (he had the grades for it), but S knew himself, and I did not push him to take Calc. He did very well in the college admissions sweepstakes as well.</p>
<p>Marite:</p>
<p>sorry, I don’t understand your logic. ALL AP students are self-selecting. Some kids choose Enviro bcos they don’t want the rigor of Bio, for example. AP Calc has an extremely high pass rate. And, I would surmise that a 5 is much, much easier to obtain than an A in Calc at a top college.</p>
<p>But my point is that Calc BC is not “hardcore”, IMO. Many top schools have different Calc sequences, and the one for engineering/math kids is deeper than that of typical Frosh Calc (which is the rough equivalent of BC). UC Berkeley and UCLA, for example, offer Calc for math majors; Calc for engineers & math honors types; and Calc for premeds & prebiz. The latter course goes beyond AB, but is just not as deep as Calc for math majors, which is ~BC. Calculus is required for entrance into Berkeley’s undergrad biz school, which is not “hardcore” engineering. Calculus is required for econ majors at many schools. Again, not hardcore.</p>
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<p>Good for him (but why is that even relevant?).</p>
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<p>And this has to do with whether Calc BC is “hardcore”, how?</p>
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<p>This was in response to the comment by Columbia Student #47. Sorry, I was not clear. I frankly don’t see the need to push students who aren’t going to be in math/science or math-inflected social sciences to take Calc in any flavor.
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<p>Yes, all AP students are self-selected. But those who take the BC exam are even more so, as do those who take AP-Physics C. It’s all right for someone who breezes through calc to think it’s easy. My S (the math-whiz, not the math-challenged one) could not understand why something that was crystal clear to him was not clear to his classmates. But people who can breeze through calc either in 8th grade or 12th grade are the exception and not the norm. MIT must know something since it admits students with only AB calc, even if it does not award them credit.</p>
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<p>Does UCB admit freshmen to its undergraduate business school?
Not from what I can tell from the following link.
[UC</a> Berkeley (Haas) Undergrad Profile](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>What does this whole discussion on the high number of 5s in Calc BC mean anyway? ~40% get 5s, but a 5 does not equate to an A, it equates to passing (somewhere between an A and a C-)… I don’t know about everywhere else, but to get credit for BC here you needed a 5 on the BC exam. I’d certainly hope that 60% of kids aren’t failing Calc I and II here, or anywhere else.</p>
<p>No admission to Haas is not eligible for Frosh, but I didn’t say it was or even infer it. I never even mentioned admissions. (Indeed, Frosh admissions is not even relevant to this thread creep.)</p>
<p>Again, the point: you posted, ColumbiaStudent, that Calc BC was “hardcore math” and/or for “engineering” types. That statement is incorrect, which is all I have been trying to point out. </p>
<p>If undergrad biz REQUIRES the equivalent of Calc BC for admission --regardless of whether it is as a Frosh or Junior – and regardless of whether that student is a finance or marketing major, Calc BC cannot be considered “hardcore.” Other than that, I give up. :)</p>
<p>Columbia_Student, you would be well advised to actually ask someone at Cal on how that works. Undergrads apply to it in their sophomore year.</p>
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<p>My understanding is that AP exams (at least in math and science) are deliberately written so that not all questions can be attempted, let along answered. So the fact that one can get a score of 5 by answering only 65 or 75% of the questions is not dispositive.
Many college tests are similarly structured. Profs will post the class median (42%!) and the standard variation; but the letter grades will not show that more than half, if not the whole class flunked.</p>
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<p>I thought we are discussing APs in high school, are we not? So a high school student does not have to take AP Calc BC in high school unless this person is going to be major in hardcore subject like Math and Engineering, which one might get a little bit deeper into the math versus someone who is a humanity or social science major. My statement is in the context of this thread.</p>