<p>Does it seem that now there are lots of AP tests that are of very little value in getting credit for courses at university? Since the whole point of AP tests is to allow high school students to test out of freshman university courses, the existence of AP tests that are commonly not accepted makes little sense, other than to pad the treasury of the test company or for high schools to be able to claim to offer so many AP courses and have students taking so many AP tests.</p>
<p>Also, there are a lot of posts about self-studying for many of these tests (by high school students already taking a full high school course load of other AP tests), which brings up the question about whether the material in these tests really is something that one would go to university to learn with the aid of an instructor.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>Computer Science A
Environmental Science
History (any)
Human Geography
Physics B
Statistics</p>
<p>However, the requirement is often for a calculus-based statistics course. For example, economics and business majors at UC Berkeley must take a calculus-based statistics course; AP Statistics does not satisfy this requirement.</p>
<p>This is the same reason that AP Physics B is not very useful for university credit – majors that require physics typically require calculus-based physics.</p>
<p>I disagree with the premise that “the whole point of AP tests is to allow high school students to test out of freshman university courses”. “AP” courses have become the de facto rigorous curriculum for high school students – especially those at public schools. </p>
<p>In my opinion there are only two AP courses that serve to allow high schools students to place out of particular classes – or jump start into advanced classes. These are AP foreign-language and AP Calculus BC.</p>
<p>So does this mean that AP courses are “bad”? Not at all. If they didn’t exist what curiculum would replace them in the United States? Not all high schools have the wherewithal to define a rigorous curiculum in History, or lab science, etc. So the AP courses in these subjects are their answer. For some high schools IB programs are the answer. For the very best private college prep high schools, a custom curriculum serves the need for rigor.</p>
<p>So we need to mentally ignore the “AP” designation, and at least for some schools “AP” courses are fine.</p>
<p>You know, ucla, I’ve wondered that, too. If a high school kid can “self-study” material while taking a full load of other AP classes and keeping up with ECs, is that AP really the equivialent of a college level course? Additionally, it would seem to me that anything that could be self-studied entailed nothing more than an accummulation of facts. I’d hope educaiton, even in high school, is more than that.</p>
That may be your opinion, but it isn’t Carnegie Mellons. My son got out of gen ed requirements and/or placed into advanced courses for every single one of these APs:</p>
<p>Calc BC
Latin (Virgil)
Comp Sci AB
Bio
Chem
Physics C (both M and E&M)
APUSH
Econ (Micro only)</p>
<p>(I think he got credit for all of them too - though just a semester in the case of econ.)</p>
<p>I do agree with you that writing papers is an integral part of history and English and that kids who self study are missing a vital part of the course. It’s too bad they can’t have students hand in a few research papers as part of the accrediting process the way NYS makes you have lab notebooks to get Regent’s credits for science courses.</p>
<p>If you open each subject it will tell you how many credits you will earn towards your degree.</p>
<p>One of the reasons my s went to PSU was their AP policy. He was able to skip gen eds he disliked and used his ap german to fulfill the colleges language requirement.</p>
<p>My $72 dollars apiece for AP tests were a great deal!!!</p>
<p>The real marketing genius is the person at College Board who drove the number of AP exams up from around 60K when I took them back in the 1970s to (I think) over 2 million now. Somehow they’ve also made it necessary or desirable for some students to take four CollegeBoard exams in basically the same freshman college subject (Physics SAT II, Physics B, Physics C part 1, and Physics C part 2). I believe there used to be a Physics A exam as well. All along they built in their own guaranteed constiutency.</p>
<p>I think the AP program has some merit for kids who are extremely bored with typical high school classes. But in many cases I think they have dumbed down the normal high school classes, and made the AP classes just marginally harder than regular classes were in my day. For example, when I took my AP exams in 1973 and 1974 my school only had one official AP course (US History) but somehow I managed to take and pass several exams based on the regular high school courses. And I guarantee you I didn’t study extra - I certainly never bought an AP prep manual if such a thing existed, and I didn’t study a lot period in those days.</p>
<p>I think that some students who pass APs may be in a position to skip college classes in those some subjects. But for some it is not a wise choice. I also think it is problematic that a student could conceivably get credit for AP Chem without ever having a lab.</p>
<p>But it is impossible to change any minds on ths subject, although I can’t resist commenting on this subject. This is probably the sixth or seventh time I’ve made these arguments on here. Everyone looks at it from their own perspective.</p>
<p>I think BBD summed it up very nicely. And after a certain point (maybe 10 APs assuming hardest course of study) I believe it becomes a matter of hanging pelts on a wall and may not even even matter that much in admissions. </p>
<p>Not to mention the student who has a full IB program with high scores on those exams and then takes a bunch af AP tests on top of it. At some point it’s got to get admission officers eyes rolling.</p>
<p>Of course, if taking standardized tests is your thing, more power to you.</p>
<p>True in practice in many schools – the AP courses can often be thought of as a “better” version of the high school course (e.g. AP Physics B).</p>
<p>Note that in some cases, high schools have “dumbed down” even the AP courses. For example, it appears to be common for high schools to require that students two grade levels ahead in math to take AP Calculus AB one year and AP Calculus BC the next year. While this may help the high school’s numbers on number of students taking AP courses and tests, it seems like a disservice to the students – if a student is truly great at math to be two grade levels ahead, shouldn’t she be able to handle calculus at at least the same pace that community college students who are zero grade levels ahead take calculus (i.e. one year for freshman calculus that AP Calculus BC approximates)?</p>
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<p>AP English is often accepted for part or all of the English writing requirements found at many universities that do accept AP credit.</p>
<p>It’s funny, when my daughter was taking her AP classes in high school, I often thought that her workload was many times heavier than either I had for similar courses in college or what students at the CC where I teach have in their 101 courses. AP course requirements and expectations vary wildly in different schools.</p>
<p>At least AP courses have standards & guidelines. Lazy or inept teachers do not teach them for long.
If a teacher wants to show “historical” movies every day for his entire regular history class (or even fictionalized movies); he can; because in many states there is no accountability. It is the same with other high school classes.
The AP’s have a built in accountability and at least in our state they are the better classes taught by the better teachers.</p>
That’s true. There’s a difference between AP Courses and AP Exams. Because the course requirements for AP Exams are exactly zero. The only requirement is taking and passing a single exam - often with a score of around 50%.</p>
<p>My opinion is that for many of these tests there is a long tail of ability level represented by the top score. A score of “5” only has a lower limit. So one student may squeak by on, say, a Calc exam with a score of “5” and struggle mightily if they skip too much college calculus, while another another “5” scorer may very well be a mini John Von Neumann and ready to assume a Professorship at 18. Only the student really knows their ability.</p>
<p>It’s a little difficult to argue this on the particular website because a lot of the kids on here are several sigma above the mean. But when kids across the country are taking a couple million of these exams every year, I don’t think it’s off base to wonder if maybe many of them aren’t skipping college work that they should really be taking.</p>
<p>When I entered school I used my AP courses to skip one smester ahead in Calc, and to clear History and English requirements (English would have been cleared by my SAT score anyway). I didn’t feel comfortable skipping anything else, and I was correct.</p>
<p>My biggest concern about AP courses is that they provide a real disincentive for teachers to require significant writing or anything else that can’t be evaluated on a timed test. For example, APUSH students may spend all year practicing DBQs without ever writing a term paper.</p>
<p>What AP courses are REALLY about: offering the perfect tool to separate the have and have-nots, to separate the wheat from the chaff, an delivering the much sought-after discriminatory “school within a school” that teachers and the middle-class adores.</p>
<p>The lack of required term papers can hardly be blamed on the AP program. HS teachers with five classes of 35~40 kids each don’t have time to read term papers.</p>
<p>No time is the silliest excuse one could use. There is plenty of time for the willing. One way to mitigate the problem would be to limit the AP classes to a strict mimimum and make them “double classes” with a corresponding effort by the teachers.</p>
<p>Of course, the doubling will only result in increasing the AP classes from a mile wide and one inch deep to … two inches deep.</p>