<p>The College Board released their AP</a> Report to the Nation. MD once again led the nation with the highest percentage of its graduates (29.6 percent) participating in AP and scoring a 3 or higher on an AP Exam. MD officials also noted that a College Board analysis shows that MD’s top ranking has actually extended for seven years. Below is the full list of the top 10 states:</p>
<ol>
<li> MD - 29.6</li>
<li> NY - 28.0</li>
<li> MA - 27.9</li>
<li> FL - 27.3</li>
<li> VA - 27.2</li>
<li> CT - 26.9</li>
<li> ME - 24.8</li>
<li> CA - 24.7</li>
<li> CO - 24.2</li>
<li> VT - 22.8</li>
</ol>
<p>Yes, some of the state percentages are abysmally low.</p>
<p>Mississippi - 4.6
Louisiana - 6.3
N Dakota - 8.6
Nebraska - 8.9
Missouri - 9.6
W VA - 9.8
DC - 9.9</p>
<p>I’d be interested in hearing from any parents of kids who live in one of the low performing states. How many AP courses were offered at your child’s high school?</p>
<p>Some states have systems that skew towards the utilization of the state’s junior and community colleges for dual credit rather than AP testing. Iowa is a prime example. So their results are not really meaningful or comparable in these charts.</p>
<p>I agree–also in a state like Iowa–the rural schools are very small and probably don’t offer a lot of AP choices to begin with, if at all. The advanced students in many states like Iowa take DE classes at CC’s or Flagships. I know in our high school, a lot of the top students just don’t bother with the AP tests because the schools they get into don’t give credits or don’t give credit in their majors so why waste the money on the test. Our kids could take 5 AP tests this year, as far as I know they are only planning on taking the BC Calc test.</p>
<p>How about my little state of MD - impressive!! </p>
<p>On the down side, it does make the applicant pool from here quite competitive. It seems like every other kid from our area (DC metro) has taken a zillion APs and scored 4s and 5s!!</p>
<p>Fortunately my D received college credit for all the AP courses that she took in high school. She had so many AP credits that it would be possible for her to graduate college in 3 years instead of 4. Our D’s high school offered numerous AP courses. However, there were still some kids that took some advanced math classes at the local community college.</p>
<p>dwhite --</p>
<p>See the Montgomery Blair Magnet thread from about a week ago. You will get a real feel of the uber competitive and pressure-cooker environment at some of these schools.</p>
<p>Montgomery County is a very weird place. I should know. I live there, and my kids graduated from its schools (with 4 and 8 AP exams, respectively, which makes them slackers by local standards).</p>
<p>Perhaps some states should be as concerned about graduation as admittance.
[Graduation</a> rates by state | College Completion](<a href=“Student Outcomes”>Student Outcomes)</p>
<p>Top private schools in our area rarely offer APs, my daughters school routinely sends students to top schools, it isnt unusual for half of the class to be attending UPenn, Georgetown, Duke & UChicago.( or similar)
Her sisters public school has also a high % of students attending top schools, which also is increased by athletic recruitment.
Her school does offer APs & she took about 5 courses (I believe 17 are offered), but her most rigorous class- marine biology was not an AP although it is given college credit at our flagship university.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea–kids here take a combination of AP and DE classes. Many kids take DE classes full time and enter their freshman year with a junior class standing because they have 2 years of credits from AP and/or DE. Our kids will have a semester’s worth of DE credits plus several AP tests, however, many of those are either in their majors and don’t count or at the case of some schools, won’t be accepted at all, even though they were from our flagship and not a community college. Our son was going to double major in Spanish and Math but he can’t apply credits in a major at most of the schools he is considering. A couple of the schools have placement tests so he may do that. They are taking a 300 level Spanish class right now that will give them a year’s worth of credit if they went to the Flagship.</p>
<p>If our kids took all possible AP tests for the AP classes they have taken and if they were all accepted, they would have enough credits to register as juniors, but they haven’t taken all the AP tests they could because many of those are in their majors and wouldn’t count anyway.</p>
<p>emeraldkity4–graduation rates at state colleges are pretty meaningless as a lot of people attending those schools really have no intention of graduating in 4 years. A better measure would be the graduation rate of kids going right from high school into a 4 year college what their grad rate is vs the overall grad rate of a huge state school.</p>
<p>Our school offers a lot of AP’s and a lot of kids take the AP classes, just not the AP tests because it’s just not worth the $$ if your college isn’t granting credit of any kind.</p>
<p>Yes, I do grumble about the cost of living & weather here in the NE (especially in February). But I’ve always said its a great place to raise children.</p>
<p>A good book to read about this phenomenon in Montgomery County is “The Overachievers” by Alexandra Robbins. One of the kids (AP Frank) graduated with I can’t remember how many AP credits. His tiger mom insisted that he take 8 AP classes his junior year and 7 AP classes his senior year plus a 2-hour daily internship doing medical research. He graduated with an unweighted 4.0 GPA, he got perfect 800 scores on all of his SAT II subject tests, and a perfect score on the SATs. Absolutely insane!</p>
<p>You can also shoose DE courses more in line with your intended major. For example, a young man I know has taken Calc 3 and Linear Algebra as his terminal HS math courses through DE - he could not have done this using AP credits. </p>
<p>He will also enter college with 52 DE credits and all are accepted, whereas there is a limit to the # of AP’s his college will take. For his family, the financial benefit DE credits provide them far outweigh that possible from AP tests.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea, but what is poor AP Frank doing now? Did he burn out; did he get the Nobel prize; did he never speak to his parents after he became self sufficient? ;)</p>
<p>“If our kids took all possible AP tests for the AP classes they have taken and if they were all accepted, they would have enough credits to register as juniors, but they haven’t taken all the AP tests they could because many of those are in their majors and wouldn’t count anyway.”</p>
<p>In my school district they do not allow anyone who takes an AP class not to take the exam. </p>
<p>My kid went to a private school and didn’t take a single AP class - though his school offered several. He did take Physics at the CC his senior year along with everyone else in his graduating class. Not taking any AP’s didn’t hurt him one bit in college admission.</p>
<p>In this case, he was taking more advanced courses than are available through AP – these math courses are normally taken after college freshman calculus or AP calculus BC.</p>
<p>I imagine the states at the top of the state AP rankings are there, in part, because they are states with wealthier and more educated populations. Isn’t one of the best predictors of SAT scores socio-economic status. Makes sense that offering APs is more likely to happen in schools in higher income areas and that the kids taking those classes do well.</p>
<p>Just imagine someone lives 10 min. drive to WV and 3 hours drive to Montgomery County, MD. He belongs to MD, compete with Montgomery Blair, while lives in a culture of West Virginia. It’s really tough for those.</p>