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<p>How many kids are like that, 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 10,000? I’m sure most of our kids are not. AP classes are there, in part, to show how good a student is, what abilities she has, and what college she can get into. KGB1337 (post #38) seems to have a very good high school.</p>
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<p>That was my kid. NOTHING they claimed in this video–or that various parents in this thread claim are givens–applied to him. Our HS does not weight grades, so there is no GPA motivation whatsoever to take APs. (Quite the reverse, in fact.) There is no contract forcing you to stay in them. You are encouraged, but not forced to take the exam in most classes. If you can’t afford to pay for the exam, the school covers it. I observed that my S and his peers were able to participate fully in HS life, including sports, music, and theater, and still take numerous APs and get enough sleep.</p>
<p>As I’ve said in the other thread on this subject, each student needs to be able to select an appropriate level of challenge for them. For some that will be 5 or 6 AP classes senior year. For others it will be 4 CP classes senior year. </p>
<p>I get really, really tired of people complaining that US public schools are too easy and don’t teach enough on the one hand, and then other the other complaining that students are too “pressured” to achieve. Maybe what we need to do is adopt a European system where kids are separated at about age 12 into completely different schools and tracks: some highly academic who will go to university, some vocationally-oriented who will receive [hopefully excellent] training in a specific field.</p>
<p>You’re very fortunate. We pay the $86 each, although the school has us pay a $15 deposit now for each test and then pay the balance later. Ridiculous fees. :(</p>
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<p>In florida students don’t pay for the AP exams. They are covered by the state.</p>
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<p>I imagine that’s because there’s an entire course on European history where a substantial amount of material is on the Renaissance.</p>
<p>Yes, you are right about AP Euro covering that. Rome and Greece rose and fell within a few days as well. It’s partly the current multi-cultural emphasis on history. I don’t think this would be much different in a regular or honors class. In middle school, son’s teacher mentioned she had a day to cover the rise and fall of Rome, which she felt deserved a great deal more time.</p>
<p>For AP World History, we had two tracks: G/T and not. It was known that if you wanted a 5 on the exam, take the “not” section, but if you wanted a terrific, fullfilling world history experience, take the G/T section. Both of my kids took the G/T section and did not score high enough on the exam to get college credit, but it was their favorite class. Field trips, culture days, etc etc. They had more in depth experiences in certain areas; the teacher let it be known that she was not teaching to the AP exam.</p>
<p>lake42ks, I think that the percentages of kids who can easily handle AP courses without an undue level of studying is more like about 1 in 50 – it probably a top 2% thing. But my point was simply that the elite colleges (Ivy level) are looking for those kids – that’s why they also want kids who are top ranked at their high schools and have a space on their recommendation forms for the teachers to rank students on various criteria and to check “best student encountered in my career” or something similar.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that all students should be expected to perform to that level. MOST students (including my own), probably shouldn’t be aiming for Ivies, and they can afford a few B’s on their transcript and still get into an appropriate college for them. But I do have to note that I was a coaster in high school, as were both my kids – and neither kid had any particular difficulty earning A’s in their AP courses. The only difference with AP courses was workload. I think both of my kids retain most of what they get on a first reading, so there is not much need to “study” material that’s been read – and I was the same way (in my youth - now that I’m in my 50’s its a lot harder to remember stuff). </p>
<p>I think its fine for a kid to enroll in a course that is going to be very difficult for them if they want the challenge – I just think that if they are concerned about the grades and they are assuming that getting an A in the AP course is difficult or unlikely, then they need to realize that for college admissions they are competing against the kids who find it easy to earn an A in an AP class with a moderate amount of effort. And if they are only seeking challenge – not worrying about grades – then it makes little sense to take AP classes in areas that they are not interested in – in that case they should be pursuing their own passions and interests and not worried about how their transcript impacts their college chances. </p>
<p>Workload is a different issue – a kid taking multiple AP courses is likely to be assigned a lot of reading. But even there, the kids on the top figure out how to digest a lot of material quickly, and they learn to scan written material very quickly and read for key elements. In fact, for the AP courses, reading course outlines might be a more efficient way of passing the course and scoring well on the AP exam than actually doing all of the assigned reading. That’s more a commentary on the superficiality of the AP system – but there are plenty of high schoolers who get good grades because they have opted for the most efficient study approaches even if it leaves them with relatively shallow knowledge of the subject.</p>
<p>I, too, often wonder how kids on CC have the TIME to take 6, 7, 8 APs a year… taking two at once for me often amount in late nights and a ton of unneeded stress.</p>
<p>To all the parents out there that said kids only take APs to boost their grade and not for the love of learning… you haven’t met me.</p>
<p>My school has seven APs- Music Theory, USH, Lit, Lang, Stats, Bio, and Chem. I have taken four of these (USH, Lit, Lang, Stats) and am now bored out of my mind. While I’m taking Stats this year, the majority of my classes are a joke. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors only have one history option each year. Juniors have the choice of APUSH or Government. This year, as a senior, I had to take government simply because my school ran out of things for me to take. I literally had two options for that period-- Independent Living or Government.</p>
<p>Maybe I have sour grapes, but to me, it’s not fair. I’d love to take more history classes, more language classes (did I mention Spanish is our only language offered, and the class is also a joke?)… but I’m a big fish in a small pond, I guess.</p>
<p>In summary, I wish I could take more APs than I have.</p>
<p>You do deserve a better shot, gifted gothic-- but there’s no reason it would have to be AP’s-- a good (and big enough) high school would offer a wider choice of classes, and levels.</p>
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<p>There are about 30,000 high schools in the US … it there is 1 student a high school like this then the top 20 schools or so can fill their entering classes with kids who can naturally handle the AP work load. </p>
<p>IMO a lot of the stress high school students feel is students (or their parents) pushing themselves to appear similar to the students who can handle in the workload in a more balanced fashion.</p>
<p>FWIW</p>
<p>While touring one of the top schools…the AdComm told the kids they would rather see a B in rigorous AP course than an A in a regular course…their point of view was that As and Bs were good, a C means the level was too high for the student…</p>
<p>Fogfog makes an excellent point. Every college presentation I’ve ever heard seems to stress how much students challenged themselves in the context of what their school offers. (What I really hate is when a kid asks, “What’s better, an A in an AP course or a B in an honors course?” and the answer is a perky “An A in an AP course.” How is that a helpful answer?) The problem then is that if you are a bright or very bright student in a high school that offers lots of AP courses, students know they will have no chance at certain colleges unless they take a pretty challenging courseload – which at many high schools i the AP track. (I am not talking Harvard - I am talking UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC SAn Diego.) At our high school, it’s even more complicated. The really strong teachers are teaching the AP courses, and the really strong students are in those courses. So if you are a very bright and capable student and you take an honors course, you really are not going to be challenged, because the teacher will be teaching to a group of students who are not the most capable and a top student will be bored.</p>
<p>I don’t think they get the status they once did. My daughter took ap classes and other of her friends did not. I am sure she gained anything from it other than the extra work</p>
<p>I used to agree with the sentiment in the video, but now that my two kids have finished high school, with 9 APs a piece, it was definitely a good thing. Yes, some are fast paced and punishing (AP Euro, APUSH) some are actually, or can be with a reasonable teacher, quite light in workload (Econ, Gov, English). As for the superficiality, yes these are survey classes, but the kids do learn an awful lot. </p>
<p>The thing I like the most about the APs is the discipline it imposes on the classroom and the teachers. My kids went to a good public school, but in the non-AP classes it was dicey whether they would actually cover the curriculum. For the AP courses, I know what they learned and how it measures up. As a bonus, D got one year of college credit, which is nice. S goes to a school that doesn’t give much credit but not wasting time in intro classes is important to him. </p>
<p>I think competitive high school experiences are too stressful these days, but I wouldn’t single out APs. At least with APs you get a tangible benefit from it.</p>
<p>Ok, so I was lurking around CC and I stumbled on this thread, so I thought I should step in with a student’s perspective on AP classes.
First off, the difficulty/stress of AP classes depends SOLELY on the teacher not on the course or its material. This year, I was one of the few freshman in my school’s history to take AP Physics, a class primarily suited for juniors and seniors. AP Physics is considered by many, one of the hardest AP classes (along with Physics C, Chemistry, etc.), I had a brilliant teacher who presented relevant material in an accessible, friendly format and made the class not only engaging, but very enjoyable. I ended up getting a 5 on Physics, a score I am proud of and I feel I earned. Along with Physics I took Calc BC and Human Geography, I took the most AP classes available as a freshman, 3, not for the purpose of looking good for colleges, but for primarily the sake of challenging myself. In fact, I was enrolled in Calc AB at the beginning of the year but my teacher suggested I move up to BC because she felt it would suit my abilities better.
Now, on the matter of stress and pressure, what was my average bed time? 11 PM, not because I spent hours upon hours studying, but because I would usually spend 9-11 browsing the internet aimlessly. I would usually come home from school at 4 (depending on what club I had) and finish my homework by 6(or something like that). After which I would do whatever I wanted until I had to go to sleep.
This video portrays schools in which students are PUSHED towards taking AP classes, not schools where students are encouraged by guidance counselors on whether or not to take challenging courses, but they’re not mandatory. If you observe a school where students take AP classes of their own accord, you would find starkly different results where students don’t stuffer from stress problems and whatnot.
Just my 2 cents on the matter</p>
<p>I don’t get the “inch wide, mile deep” criticism–they same could be said of actual intro courses, and while I think it’s definitely important to get depth, it makes a lot of sense to get some “breadth” first. Psychology? American history? Economics? World history? All very broad topics–you could–and many do–spend a lifetime studying one sub-sub-sub area within those. But that preparation tends to occur more in undergrad (in psych, mainly through research experience), post-undergrad work, grad school, and post-doctoral work. Yes, it helps to develop a research focus relatively early for the sake of grad school admissions (at least in my field, you apply to to specific faculty members based on research match), but it does NOT need to be RIGHT AWAY (in HS?). Personally, and YMMV, I didn’t start doing work in what would become my area of interest until midway through my junior year (a year after I started getting involved in research in my field), and I was admitted to a PhD program straight out of undergrad. I also had little to no idea that my particular area of research focus really existed as a HS student taking AP Psych; that class gave me an excellent, if broad, overview of the field and served as an excellent starting point.</p>
<p>Not only do you need to have some understanding of areas outside of your direct line of research, but I question how someone could really develop a specific interest in a field without having some sort of general “overview” of it as a guide/sampling of what’s “out there.”</p>
<p>JMHO and YMMV.</p>
<p>At my, admittedly, small school It is a whole big thing to be admitted into an AP.
There are Applications, and personal essays, and certain requirements that need to be met, and the PSATs weigh heavily on if you are selected for an AP or not.
Also, if you need to drop… you drop.
Ultimately I feel like I’m being prepared for college in every course I take, I’ve yet to drop a course, yeah they are more work! I got my lowest grades ever in one of my APs (a B+ so not too bad!) but I feel like that is what is going to be expected of me in college, and I’m ultimately grateful for the experience, even if I freak out before a test, or a group project.</p>
<p>“If you observe a school where students take AP classes of their own accord, you would find starkly different results where students don’t stuffer from stress problems and whatnot.”</p>
<p>Absolutely true. D would have had to drop out and go to college early if it wasn’t for the more challenging work of AP classes. S needed them to learn study skills.</p>
<p>I don’t like the way AP classes are run, at least at my school. They basically are your average classes for the yes-I-can-read set. The problem is that in Florida, the exams are paid for by the state. The school district gets money (the superintendent literally gets bonuses) for every student taking an AP test. The problem is that guidance counselors at my school push people into taking those courses to get the extra money and to push up the percentage of students taking those courses. (I went to an inner-city magnet school desperately trying to lead parents to believe that they offer quality academics) Even if a student is failing the AP course, it is extremely difficult to switch him or her out, they just won’t give up the money. The classes themselves are not hard. They seemed like an average level of difficulty. Furthermore, I know my teachers were annoyed with having to teach the material on the test in the timeframe given to them instead of just teaching a regular class. Most students don’t pass the test though, and a large number of them don’t even try. I know I didn’t learn anything in my AP Macro class and the test was impossible for me to complete - I got a 1. I got high scores on all my other tests but that was only due to the fact that I’m a good test taker. Most students do fail. My school has the highest number of AP courses offered in the district, but I think it’s an awful system.</p>