<p>"I, too, think that the fact that a kid somewhere can prepare for an AP exam with only test-prep books is reason to look with suspicion on the whole idea of AP’s. "</p>
<p>-The idea of AP is to get college credits (if allowed, some pre-meds, for example, are not allowed to skip first Bio even haveing “5” in AP Bio). It works the best actually if you want to skip classes that you really do not care about, the once that are extremely difficult for you. D. did it with AP US history (and avoided potentially lowering her college GPA) and half-way with AP English (had to take 1 semester because of “4” in AP exam). She said college Honors English was a joke, she learned nothing and got very easy “A” after torture of AP English in HS.</p>
We have those types of programs and classes in my school system. They are considered the equivalent of AP and IB classes and are weighted accordingly.</p>
<p>^My D’s regular science classes prep. her for college much better than other’s AP’s, which was noted by some profs, and she was hand picked by one of them to be his assistant. She was not in any specialized magnet school, she attended very small private school (33 kids in her class). Some of her regular HS classes were using college books that she later used in her college classes.</p>
It depends a bit on the course. I took Calculus self-paced at Harvard. Never went to a lecture or a class. Just worked my way through the book and took tests as necessary. If I got stuck there was a math help center full of smart math majors. It was much more efficient than the AP Calc course I’d taken in high school. (Got a 2 on the exam, hence the retake.)</p>
<p>^Calculus has stayed about the same for few centuries.
D. said that different editions of the same Bio book (4 years difference) were drastically different because of new findings.</p>
<p>Another consideration - it is so much in these books, it is not possible to remember everything, how do you know what is important and what one needs to be skimming thru? Profs usually point out and a lot of profs publish their notes on-line too.</p>