<p>One advantage of AP is that it sets a standardized national curriculum. That may dissuade some schools from, say, omitting Thomas Jefferson from the US History syllabus (as has been proposed in Texas) or evolution from the Bio curriculum (proposed in Kansas).</p>
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<p>True, but only for those college-bound students who are taking the AP level courses (a small minority of all high school students).</p>
<p>But the fact that AP has become a substitute for a standardized national high school curriculum (but only for the top college-bound students) indicates the deplorable state of US high school education where there is little consistency in what is taught otherwise.</p>
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That’s better as long as you don’t rank students using GPA.</p>
<p>Reply/question to surfcity’s post #22:</p>
<p>Does your high school not weight AP the same as honors? Ours weights both plus .66, I think, so B+ in AP or honors counts as an A when weighted. Also at our school, all of the remaining academic courses are considered college preparatory, so if they are not honors or AP, they do not get weighted. They also don’t report class rank. Interesting how weighting works differently indifferent places. No wonder colleges need to unravel it.</p>
<p>There was also a Boston Globe article a few weeks ago about how Wellesley, MA (affluent) wants to do away with weighting all together. But I did not read that one:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/yourtown/wellesley/articles/2012/05/06/wellesley_high_considers_changing_how_gpa_is_calculated/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/yourtown/wellesley/articles/2012/05/06/wellesley_high_considers_changing_how_gpa_is_calculated/</a></p>
<p>(Oops, I think I just hijacked the post but I am the OP therefore feel entitled.)</p>
<p>Most of the high schools have AP as a natural progression for honors students in different subjects. SO if not AP, high schools will be replacing it with similar courses and only certain students will be taking such courses. I think basic stat is taught to all students integrated into their regular math classes. The state math curriculum and NCTM have statistic standard integrated into it and it is a big chunk of concepts in each grade. So every one is getting a chance to study some stat in school. Now even if the school offers a particular honors stat class, only few who are interested in perusing the subject will take it. So not using the college board curriculum but designing their own STAT curriculum will have the same group of students taking it. I don’t understand how that is a solution. I am just glad the high schools at least have different options for their advanced students in terms of AP and IB at present.</p>
<p>“At some colleges, the college course and the AP course may not match exactly, so that a student skipping the college course may have to self-study the “missing” bits.”</p>
<p>-They will be strongly advised NOT to skip in cases like this…and they better listen and take it despite of “A” and “5”.</p>
<p>Another note is about weight. Many colleges will strip down to UW and do recalculation while considering rigor and actual HS (as some HSs are very well known). I would not worry too much about weighted GPA, just try to get 4.0uw, it will do very well with very rigorous schedule, tons of ECs, solid scores,…</p>
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<p>They only rank by decile. Some parents are wanting the school to change policy on this and start weighting, I hear they are considering it.</p>
<p>I think most colleges weight GPA on their own anyway so it doesn’t matter to me.</p>
<p>I personally went to a small Quaker HS that didn’t give grades at all. A longish paragraph from each teacher is what we got, and detailed personal recommendations. Some colleges loved us, some I guess didn’t. All worked with the system we had. In looking over my alma mater’s graduating class college list this year, I see it’s still full of Ivies and top LACs, so I guess “no GPA at all” is still working OK there.</p>
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<p>Berkeley’s Math Department leaves it up to the student to make his/her own judgement:
[Advanced</a> Placement (AP) Examinations | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/ap-exams]Advanced”>http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/ap-exams)</p>
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<p>Interesting that Berkeley combines differential equations and linear algebra into one course. I always figured that you could probably pretty easily get away with doing so without making the course too much harder, though at the cost of making the material much more abbreviated. From comparing Berkeley’s course description ([Math</a> 54 | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/lowerdivcourses/math54]Math”>Math 54 | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley)) with the course I took at Tufts (we used the same textbook for linear algebra), I feel like they’re probably doing an OK job of covering them both. But they’re spending six hours a week on this class, half of which is in discussion section. I’m surprised they don’t make the course into two and eliminate the discussion sections.</p>