<p>Someone told me that AP Physics B is for stupid people and C is for smart people.</p>
<p>Good Universities will ignore AP Physics B and AP Calculus AB</p>
<p>AP physics B is only useful as a course breadth class for people who never plan on going into science or engineering. Since most good colleges don’t let you test out of breadth requirements, it’s not all that useful.</p>
<p>For the reason I explained above, most good universities won’t give you credit for AP physics B. Some WILL give credit for AP calculus AB, but only for like the first term of introductory calculus.</p>
<p>yea alot of colleges won’t give you credit for physics B. it was the only class my school offered so i took it anyways though. the calculus part however isn’t true. for my school calculus ab covers the first calculus course so i got credit for that.</p>
<p>ap credit varies from school to school however so you should check the websites of the schools you plan on applying to and see if the class is going to be worth the effort XD for alot of classes you might also just end up getting elective credit.</p>
<p>Most of my students who have taken AP Calculus AB and earned a 4 or a 5 have ended up getting credit for Calc I somewhere. There are a few places still offering credit for a 3 and a few places offering more than Calc I credit, and there are some places that are offering less credit than the norm (requiring a 5 or no credit at all), but at least in my experience in working with students for the last few years, AB is still getting plenty of credit.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar enough with credit for Physics B to speak of it, and colleges will certainly vary, so you should definitely check with their standards.</p>
<p>Physics C goes into Calculus. True, Ivy League-calibre universities generally do not give credit for Physics B.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty dumb statement though to say that any AP is for ‘‘stupid’’ people.</p>
<p>AP Physics B is probably tougher than C as well, due to the sheer amount of topics that have to be covered. What others said is correct though - Phy B is a breadth course and does not go deep, so credit is generally not awarded.</p>
<p>That’s unfortunate… my school doesn’t even offer C or CB, just the first two.</p>
<p>What is the AP Physics B exam for if you don’t get credit for it…?</p>
<p>Not sure about other schools, but Cornell does give 4 credits (science/engineering physics course) for a 5 on Physics B assuming you scored a 4+ on Calculus BC. You get 8 credits (non-science/engineering physics) for the 5 even w/o the BC grade.</p>
<p>All of the schools I want to go to give credit for AP Physics B.</p>
<p>In fact… most of them give like 6-8 credits.</p>
<p>A nearby state university gives 10 credits for Phy B if you get a 5. Phy B is a great general course to take, and you get credit in a lot of schools for it, but not the top ones.</p>
<p>I think I failed at communicating what I intended.</p>
<p>Yes, you’ll often be able to get CREDIT for physics B. But at top universities, it will just mean you have to take that many fewer units in college; it’s not going to satisfy many breadth requirements or prerequisites.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say Physics B is for “non engineers” and Physics C is for engineers. I plan on going into engineering, but I’m not taking Physics C because I think it’s more important to have a general foundation first (took Physics B and am now taking Relativity and Quantum Mechanics).
Physics B is not a cakewalk. It can be pretty tricky at times, but it’s still a whole lot of fun ^^</p>
<p>amarkov has it exactly backward. Most top colleges will use a qualifying AP score as a prerequisite, but do not give you college credit for it. In other words, no matter how many AP courses you have taken, HYPS, top LAC’s etc. will still require 8 full semesters of coursework to graduate. You may not have to take an Intro to Bio, or Chem 100- you can go right to the next course in the sequence. Or, you may fulfill some requirements such as a foreign language course by virtue of your AP score. </p>
<p>At some State U’s they handle it much differently- you can actually enter college with advanced standing e.g. as a sophomore with enough AP credits. There may be other schools that offer advanced standing, but I don’t know which ones.</p>
<p>At my school, Physics B or an algebra-based college physics class is good enough for the physics pre-med requirement. I’m pre-med and now I don’t have to take physics in college. Not sure if this is the case for other schools, but I would assume it would apply to many that are a similar caliber. Physics C is more for engineering or physics majors.</p>
<p>Calc AB roughly corresponds to Calc I in many schools, and Calc BC is like Calc II, so it’s likely that you would get credit or advanced placement out of Calc I for a 4 or 5 in AP Calc AB.</p>
<p>I have heard that if you want to do a chemistry, engineering, or physics major, you want to have calculus based physics. Physics B is more of a survey course, but it may be okay for pre-med. My freshman physics teacher for honors physics covered basically every chapter in our textbook as well as the appropriate math skills, so I think that was very similar to the Physics B curriculum. I am taking Physics C this year (I want to be a Chemistry major) and my impression is that if you have already taken Calc BC (which I took last year and got a 5) and intro physics, it is very manageable. However, if you are concurrently enrolled in Calc, I imagine it must be quite difficult in the beginning.</p>