Just realizing that how my D's high school handles APs is a bit odd

Applying to College
21

The issue is that “AP” means two things

  1. a similar, but more rigorous version of a course offered, typically one step above honors : that’d include English, history, APES, econ, psych, stats, CS, physics 1.
  2. the second, more advanced level class in a sequence: biology, chemistry, physics C, Foreign language (typically requires 4 years of previous study although some high performing fit the re-req level into 3), calculus (requires Precalculus).
  3. some high school treat calculus AB and BC as two levels of calculus, like college calculus 1 and college calculus 2 each over one year. Other schools treat the two classes as levels of intensity: AB OR BC, with bc including AB and going at at accelerated pace.
  4. “most rigorous” doesn’t mean “every AP you could conceivably take”, hence the Stanford reminder. It means taking English, history/social science every year, bio/chem/physics, Foreign language through level 4 or AP, math through calculus or precalculus, and in some cases, one art class. Among those there should be 4-8 AP or equivalent classes (IB, aice, dual enrollment, PSEO…)
22

I had been SO worried about that check box about “most rigorous” because although DD took many AP classes (11 in all) she opted for Honors English instead of AP English. HA HA HA - it turns out, the guidance counselors check the box for any student who takes at least TWO AP classes!

23

OP- Have your child talk to their guidance counselor directly about what the school criteria is for that “most rigorous schedule” box. At my daughter’s school, it was a combination of AP and Honors and there was a a range. It was something like 15-18 AP/Honors over the 4 years. No point guessing and worrying potentially for nothing.

24

It sounds from the above 3 posts that my D will probably more than qualify for checking the Most Rigorous box. (If 2 AP classes is a typical standard, I kind of wonder what the point of the checkbox even is!) She’ll have completed 9 APs and 8 Honors classes if my count is right.

OK, sounds like all of this was much ado about nothing then. :slight_smile:

25

^ because the high school has kids who barely finished algebra2 non honors, only took 2 years of a foreign language, took weight lifting, high school accounting (ie bookkeeping), and sports management for electives, plus honors English. And that kid is doing better than the student in Remedial English, algebra 1b, etc.
Outside the world of college confidential, taking mostly honors and APs qualifies as “most rigorous”.
Btw there are GCs who’ve lost perspective and have pet peeves so they won’t check the box unless the kid has taken calculus (or MV!!!) or 12 APs but adcoms know how to read transcripts.

26

She should ask her counselor whether s/he will check the “most demanding” box. Different schools and counselors may have different criteria.

27

Our HS also requires honors level before APs. No way anyone at our school could amass 12-15 APs that seem so common on CC. We also have strict prerequisites–for example, my S was not allowed to take AP Chem as a junior even though he got an A in honors Chem as a soph. because he hadn’t taken precalc as a sophomore. You are allowed to go directly from precalc to BC, but only if you have an A (not even A-) in precalc H.

The top students from our school still get into top 20 schools. This year we have students attending Dartmouth, Columbia, Davidson, Emory, Brown, etc. Last year’s class saw kids accepted to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Penn, and Cornell.

I don’t think it’s such a bad system. My S got a 4 on this year’s “impossible” Physics I AP test–he thinks it was because he had taken Physics H first.

28

I think it’s wise to have prereqs for most of the APs, FWIW. My kid homeschools, which means, for her, she takes courses at different places and through various providers (I don’t teach her core courses). She has always been strong in certain areas and so she took high school-equivalent courses in the sciences and in English and Spanish when she was middle school-age. Therefore, she was prepared to take AP Chem and AP Comp Sci as a freshman last year, and she is taking 4 APs next year as a 10th grader in the areas of her strengths. She has had the prereqs for each AP she is taking.

In her words, there is NO WAY she would have survived AP Chem last year if she hadn’t previously taken a high school honors chem class. She had already been coding in Java and in Python for a while before taking AP Comp Sci A. She has taken four years of high school-level Spanish, so she will take AP Spanish next year. Etc. She is prepared for each AP course she takes as she has had the high school honors equivalent of the subject already (with the exception of AP Calc AB…her honors precalc course is supposedly the appropriate prereq for that one). She will probably never take APUSH because history isn’t her thing and she will have her hands full enough with the honors American History version of the subject.

The point of what I write above is that I would think it would be extremely difficult for a kid to take any AP, regardless of the kid’s age or grade, if he or she hadn’t already had some honors course work or some other out-of-classroom work in the subject. My kid might crash and burn immediately if she was forced or pressured into taking APUSH or AP Economics, for example, but she loved and did well in AP Chem. It all depends on a kid’s interests, strengths, and academic background, IMO. If my kid went to a traditional school, and if that school allowed APs in 9th grade, I’d only let her take the AP if she had already had experience with the subject, else I’d worry about her sanity. Just my two cents.

29

Having forced prerequisites before taking AP classes is silly IMO. There aren’t enough periods in HS for the advanced kids to bother with taking Honors whatever before taking an AP class. Most of the smart kids at my kid’s HS wind up doing the H Bio-AP Bio-AP Chem-AP Physics C sequence. And the only reason they do H Bio in 9th is because the school doesn’t allow any APs in 9th grade. I thinking having teacher recommendations to go to AP is way better than forcing a kid to take Honors Chemistry or Honors Physics.

Similarly, taking AP Calc AB and BC both makes little sense since there is 50-60% overlap. The correct way is to go from PreCalc to either AB or BC. If the school changes the curriculum to have BC start off where AB ends, then you’re denying kids the opportunity to take MV calculus while in HS.

30

@ProfessorPlum168 :
Some high schools teach BC as the next course after AB so that there’s no overlap. Some high schools teach AB as a stand alone course that is slower paced.
Very few high schools offer MV.
Some high schools only offer AB and not every year because too few kids are ready for calculus or they just dont have the resources or the teacher to teach the class. At some schools calculus is seen as so out of the norm advanced that it’s not offered in school but through dual enrollment or virtually. At a low performing school I know only had four seniors ready for precalculus. Taking calculus as a senior let alone earlier, is not the norm in US high schools. It’s only he norm for the most advanced students.

AP biology requires some chemistry knowledge; some high schools, knowing many students take it without the chemistry pre-req, include some chemistry at the start of the course v. Schools where the pre-req is assumed and the class starts immediately with AP Bio content.

You can’t extrapolate from what your high school does.

31

@MYOS1634 re: AB/BC non-overlap I mentioned that already in my post. But by doing that you’re making a one year course turn into 2 years, plus you’re denying students the opportunity to take a higher-level math class or some other important elective by artificially changing the true intent of the BC course. The Calc BC course intention is to match a university’s one year curriculum 1:1 as far as time goes. If I had a student(s) who was forced to take both AB and BC who was smart enough to handle BC directly, I would advise them to take the BC class online or take the classes at a university or CC.

As far as I can tell, I see no school offering Physics C E&M or Physics C Mechanics as a separate one year course, so why do it for Calc BC?

32

To add: teaching resources are finite and are subject to a salary budget. Schools will (as they should) ensure that required courses are covered before assigning teachers to electives.

Not an option at all schools.

Obviously, you can determine what HS is appropriate for your kid(s) and enroll accordingly, which is all well and good if the parent/child is aware of curriculum differences before enrolling. Many are not, and once attending the HS, I would not assume that one parent/student will successfully change the curriculum at that school.

It’s rare, but not unheard of, so one can’t make a blanket statement that no school does it that way. As an example:
http://www.thehill.org/Customized/Uploads/ByDate/2018/June_2018/June_14th_2018/CourseGuide2018_2019v562515.pdf

33

Our high school requires Honors Bio and Honors Chem BOTH before taking AP Chem, AP Physics or AP Bio. They have a very high rate of 5’s on these tests.

AP Chem and AP Bio are supposed to be equivalent to college chemistry and bio. It is not reasonable to expect a 15 year old to take either with no high school level science courses before hand.

No kid is being “deprived” by taking a 4 year science sequence of Bio, Chem, AP Physics 1 and then either AP Chem, Bio or Physics C.

Noone expects to take AP Lang or Lit as a freshman, the normal 4 year sequence is English 1, 2, AP Lang, AP Lit. Does anyone think those kids are being deprived?

Does anyone think Spanish 1 in eighth grade, 2, 3, AP lang, AP lit in high school deprives kids who like foreign language?

34

Asking my daughter’s school counselor about what qualifies to be checked off as “most rigorous” has made me a persona non grata at her school. I started a thread a few months ago regarding whether or not senior classes are taken into consideration by admission officers, and a few people suggested I ask her counselor about the “most rigorous” standards for her school because it varies a lot between schools.

So I did. First, her counselor didn’t even know what the checkbox was, and I had to explain it to her. This was when my daughter was registering for senior classes, and we really needed to know the answer, and I suspected that the school had to have some kind of standard. We went back and forth with no answer, so I e-mailed the head counselor (who had been CC’d on my earlier e-mails) and asked the same thing.

In the response I got, the counselor subtly implied that I was asking the school to do something unethical just by asking what the standard was for that designation (and whether my D’s courseload qualified).

“I assure you that our counselors consistently represent their students in the most positive light possibly while observing the standard of integrity the institutions of higher learning expect.”

She then finally gave me a vague answer:

“…it is my duty to report at the beginning of each year in our Common Application file the number of honors and AP classes available to students. Counselors indicate on each senior profile whether the student’s curriculum is “below average, average, demanding, very demanding, or most demanding”. The category of “most demanding” would include honors and AP courses beginning with the 9th grade and continuing across the disciplines through grade 12.”

Then…

“College admissions offices have the transcript along with several elements of the application packet, so the designation by counselor can be easily verified with a second look at the transcript.” Again, implying that I was asking them to check the box unethically - but I clearly stated that I just wanted to know what was required to check the box!

I think I replied one last time asking what exactly the designation would be for my daughter’s courseload on her applications and didn’t get a reply.

I was also told that the school’s Naviance didn’t have data for student admissions (no scatterplots) and the school didn’t keep records either. The school has 1,700 students.

So, we’re going into her senior year, not knowing how she compares to her classmates aside from her class rank, or what her chances are of her being admitted to even our state public schools. She’ll have 11 honors, 6 APs (APES, Bio, Chem, Calc, Stats, Physics) and one DE - English.

I sure hope the OP has better luck than I did.

35

@VickiSoCal You’re comparing apples to oranges with your comparisons. 4 years of English is required so no one has any reason to skip to AP English Lang or Lit. As for foreign language, many kids start right off at the language level right before AP. It’s called placement testing.

If you had an unlimited amount of time it’s a great idea fo take a bunch of prep classes but with 6 periods for 4 years there’s hardly any room for electives. My kid for example had room for only one elective in his first 3 years. Every other class was a requirement or a UC recommendation. It was clearly stated to parents by UCB that for STEM majors the expectation is a minimum of 8 AP classes. The “competition” all takes 10-11 AP classes. There’s no way to fit the 3 major AP science classes without doubling up. Taking H Chem as a sophomore with AP Bio as a senior might have been nice but then he would have to double up with AP Physics and have been left with 0 APs in 10th since AP WH wasnt offered.

9th:
H English 9
H Biology
H Alg 2-Trig
Chinese I
Symphonic Band
Some mandated CC health skills class

10th (1 AP class max):
H English 10
AP Biology
H Pre-Calc
H World History
Chinese II
Wind and Brass Ensemble

11th (4 AP max):
AP English Lang
AP Calc BC
AP Chem
APUSH
Chinese III
Cybersecurity (elective since he couldn’t take AP Music Theory without a Band class and he was at the AP max).
PE

12th (unlimited AP):
AP English Lit
AP US Govt / H Economics
AP Physics C
AP Stats (elective)
AP Psychology (elective)
AP Computer Science A (elective)
(wasn’t able to take MV Calc because of work conflicts)

36

Wow @LeastComplicated! I’m floored that’s how your school responded. That seems like a crazy response to what should be totally transparent information about YOUR OWN CHILD. My daughter’s schools’ counselors met individually with students with their parents early junior year to discuss exactly what they send to colleges, the criteria for rigor, reviewed the individual students’ class standing/rank, etc… IMO, the GC should be providing that information to help guide the student on how to make their college list. Our counselor asked for a list from my daughter of the schools she was applying to make sure she had adequate safeties and matches, based on Naviance data. I’m so sorry this was your experience!

37

My kids are also in a 6 period school and for my current going in to 11th the plan is:

9th

summer online- health

APHUG
Language Arts 1H
Japanese 2
Bio H
Precalc H
CrossCountry/Swim

10th

summer online- US Gov

AP Comp Sci A
AP Euro
Language Arts 2H
Chemistry H
Japanese 3
CrossCountry/Swim

11th

summer online- careers

AP Calc AB
AP Chem
AP Physics 1
APUSH
AP Lang
Cross country/swim

12th

AP Art History
AP Econ Micro/Macro
AP bio or APES
AP Lit
???
Cross country/swim

So it works. Even with pre-reqs. I wish she was taking AP Japanese which would have pushed AP Chem to senior year but Japanese 3 was a nightmare so it was not to be. 13 or 14 APs is what she may end up with.

38

My daughter’s school also had pre-requirements for the upper level science classes. Yep, that forced doubling up and little room for non academic electives but it still worked out. My daughter took bio in 9th - chem in 10th - physics in 11th - AP Physics C and AP chem in 12th. She tried to get into AP bio in 11th grade but the class was full because they gave seniors priority. She still graduated with 8 AP courses and 2 DE classes. They were evenly divided between STEM and eng/history.

Clearly different high schools vary greatly in how they approach their curriculum. So do colleges. What is it that everyone quotes here? Bloom where you are planted and make the best of what your school has to offer.

39

Stanford may encourage sanity, but is going to choose the kids they think will thrive best (even, survive,) in their stressful environment. Part of that is the level of prep your peers will come in with, how that affects classroom expectations. So, you still have to make wise (or strategic) choices. Or be a realist.

The rigor that matters most is that related to the possible major. Depending on the school district and area, sometimes the online school profiles are different than what’s in the Common App School Report. If your hs doesn’t tmention the prereqs, either the GC can make it one line in her letter or the student can note it, in Addl Info. One line can do it.

Not every kid will take AP in all 3 lab sci. Some will fit in only two. YOu just want the course choices to make sense to the colleges you’re targeting and the possible major.

40

Our high school has no Naviance. no junior or senior meeting to discuss choices with students and parents and has never mentioned the check box. I would not even know it existed if not for c.c.