<p>I was wondering about the same thing - how they got in so many AP courses. My D’s high school doesn’t offer that many AP courses and when they do, its a year long class. My niece in AL is starting an AP class (USH) next semester at her high school, and it is only one semester long. How can they cover so much material in just one semester?</p>
<p>I agree there is a lot of memorization in AP USH, but haven’t found that to be so in AP Bio. Both of D’s AP teachers are great teachers and make it interesting for the kids, but I don’t think there is any way to get around a lot of the memorization for history. It is what it is (names, battles, treaties, years (not so much exact dates), etc.). </p>
<p>Has anyone found that colleges don’t want the student to take the AP course for their intended major? We have heard that from a couple of people…basically they want you to take their course - the way they teach it, the material they cover, etc.</p>
<p>Really good thread. The first time I posted on CC, I questioned the wisdom of all these kids being pushed to take multiple APs, and isn’t it an outdated, overused way to encourage learning. I was uniformly shot down by people who think APs are great and they’ve been given for 20+ years and they’re worthwhile, etc. And this was only a few months ago. </p>
<p>D took AP World History in 10th grade and I have to say it was the beginning of the end (the death of learning). There was no analysis, no comparing one culture to another – just an incredible amount of work. No joy of learning, no insights. I can totally understand why Scarsdale removed them from their curriculum. If you’re looking to get kids interested in asking probing questions and gaining a breadth of knowledge about a specific subject, APs (as taught to D which is the only experience I have) are not the way to do it. More independent study for motivated students is the way to go.</p>
<p>Yes - we heard this from all the schools my older son looked at. He is an ENGR major, so he is taking the beginning Calculus and Physics classes (even tho he had 5s on the AP exams), but he took the AP credit for US History. He also had a bunch of dual credit classes that he took credit for (English and social sciences/humanities).</p>
<p>Classof2015 …APWorldHis in 10th grade was a disappointingly similar experience for my D. Hope she will take World Civ again in college.</p>
<p>Are AP classes the same as college courses? Should we encourage our children to rack up college credits in HS? I suppose you have to consider the career goals and educational needs of any given student. </p>
<p>My dad is a retired Chair of Engineering. He would not allow majors to exempt out of Calc 1 with an AP score. He did not mind if a student wanted to skip say, Intro to Art History, to take an upper-level Art History course.</p>
<p>I can imagine that many premed students graduate from HS with enough AP credits to bypass the first year of (some) colleges. I doubt that this is the best preparation for upper-level science courses, MCATs, nor a way to impress med school admissions committees. </p>
<p>In other fields, it may matter less …but I think four years of college are good for most students from the perspective of adult cognitive development. Having college credits from AP scores (or just a few requirements out of the way) can enable a student to enrich his/her education with study abroad, a dual major, an internship, an honors program, etc.</p>
My son also took AP World in 10th grade, a few towns over from Scarsdale. And it was a wonderful class. They did a lot of work with big ideas. (I remember him coming back talking about collective town greens and the last place they lingered on in our county.) They made time for skits. It was a fun class. He got a five on the AP. APs don’t have to be bad courses, they don’t have to teach only to the test. </p>
<p>If I recall correctly my sons did dissections in the time after the AP Exam and the end of the year.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why a college can’t start a Calculus course where the AP leaves off, instead of making the poor kids review half the material.</p>
<p>Do I think high school kids are really ready for 8 or 9 REAL college courses before they graduate high school. Not really, but I just don’t think, at least for my kids, that the AP courses were that bad.</p>
<p>I don’t know if calculus courses have changed since the dark ages when I was in college, but I noticed that AP Calculus focused rather completely on problem-solving and applications of calculus, with no attention to proofs or theory. That was fine by me – I remember shedding real tears over delta epsilon proofs, and struggling mightily over proofs by induction – but I wonder if this is part of the reason why majors outside the social sciences or humanities often prefer that students take the classes as offered at the college?</p>
<p>A lot depends on the high school and the student. In my own long-ago experience (back when APs weren’t ubiquitous), my HS’s APs could stand toe-to-toe with any top-notch university offering. The teachers mostly held doctorates in those fields. The classes were rigorous, and the kids that took them were easily better prepared than their college classmates. I saw many examples.</p>
<p>But now, with so many APs, things are different, so you need to assess and evaluate. There’s no substitute for knowing the quality of the teacher/curriculum, and understanding your own young student. If you’re not sure, be cautious. That’s my plan.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the AP curricula are impossibly broad on purpose to ensure that you can’t teach to the test. The idea is that it forces each teacher to just teach a solid advanced academic course to prepare for the test, since covering 100% of the material is out of the question. The fact that parts of the testable curriculum are not covered is accounted for in the scoring – in AP Chem, roughly 59% correct earns a 5.</p>
<p>That’s what I thought too, spdf. Also, at basically every school except CalTech, only math majors would be required to take analysis, and most people who do so take it after they’ve already taken calculus taught in the manner similar to the AP test.</p>
<p>And I’m not sure where this idea that the AP tests are a mile wide and an inch deep thing came from. If that’s true, then my college classes must have been a mile wide and a mile deep.</p>
<p>If a HS offers many AP’s and the avg. AP track kid takes 9-12 AP classes- in our top performing district the best teachers teach the AP classes, the most focused students are in class learning and the most resources for a class are available (parents have to pay books, lab fees, study guides etc.) Therefore, it didn’t take long for my athletic, easy going son to realize these classes were easier for him because they were taught by better teachers.</p>
<p>But he did start college as a Soph- honors college, now dept. honors, fellow, senior thesis in progress, duel major and summer abroad as well as one internship. But, I have always been uneasy that he was doing “college” from 16 years old on. Why is that necessary? And the constant study until 1:00 am still feels like a form of child abuse. When it is all said and done, they find out they can’t get into their top 20 ranked school, 'cause everyone else did more!!! </p>
<p>S2 not even interested in AP/Honors, so either am I. Should be interesting going through that admission cycle. But, I still have a nagging feeling that if one does not have a 4.0+ GPA, might as well have a 3.0 it seems.</p>
<p>Although I didn’t see anything in the article about this, I wonder if a re-vamping of the AP test could possibly also see a re-timing of when the test is given. I think most of the schools in the country start in late August and end in June. In my son’s district in Pennsylvania, we start the Tuesday after labor day and end in mid-June, with the actual last day of school dependent on snow days. I don’t know how it would work for the states that have early August starts with May endings, but I really think the tests should be given at the end of May to allow all students the full nine months of teaching.</p>
<p>Our school only offers a dozen or so AP classes and the first AP class a student can take is in sophomore year. The small school schedule makes it impossible for anyone to take more then probably 8 AP’s, since many are offered just once a day. However, we do live very close to good colleges and a couple of dozen students take classes at those colleges instead of doing AP classes. </p>
<p>My daughter who graduated in 2003 took just one AP, my son who graduated in 2006 took 3 AP’s and my youngest son, who will graduate this year, will have taken 6.</p>
<p>AP classes definitely are not ‘the same’ as college classes but if taught correctly do meet the rigor of an intro college class. High school classes are structured very differently than college classes as they generally meet everyday for a year (as opposed to 2-3 days a week for a semester), are taught in a small class environment with a single teacher (as opposed to a 100+ person lecture with multiple TAs), there is (hopefully) a support system of parents at home and friends in class to encourage studying (as opposed to college freshman in an unfamiliar situation), etc. </p>
<p>These reasons should help students to do better in an AP class than they might in a college class even when they are taught at the same difficulty level. This is why I believe that students should use APs to get as much credit as possible, assuming that a high AP score was not some sort of fluke and that the class was taught well in HS.</p>
<p>We have been told the same thing–to only use AP credit for non major topics…and to take the coursework as outlined fore major. Our student’s chosen collge does have various levels of freshman math based on the AP scores AND SAT2s exams. Same for sciences, Chem/Physics etc so that will be considered.
The AP Englishes, histories etc gain only rigor and no advancement etc.
When considering taking APs in hs, we specifically looked at AP policies at some of the perspective colleges when planning the schedule.</p>
<p>This varies from college to college and from major to major within a college.</p>
<p>Often, colleges prefer that science and math majors take the college’s introductory courses rather than placing out of them with AP credits. But in other fields, it may be less important. My daughter is an economics major at a top 20 school. The economics department encouraged students to use their AP Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, and/or Calculus scores to place out of the college’s introductory economics and math courses. My daughter, who had 5s on all three exams, did as the department recommended and had no problem.</p>
<p>Well, too late for my D. She took the AP Bio and that will be her major, but maybe it will help get her app looked at in some of the higher reach colleges just for the fact that she took AP classes.</p>
<p>Our high school only has regular track and AP track for many courses so students who want more advanced classes only can take the AP version. Unless a school is wealthy enough to offer both honors and AP, it leaves students who are at similar high schools no choice.</p>
<p>It’s not too late at all. At many (perhaps most) colleges, a student who took an AP course and scored well enough on the AP test to get credit for it can decline that credit and take the college’s introductory course instead.</p>
<p>There are many colleges that care a great deal about the rigor of the program and students should take AP Classes in the subjects they are interested in. (Though you can also argue taking APs in classes you never want to see again is also useful.) My older son skipped into advanced levels of computer science, calculus and physics without any problem. He was also happy to get out of most of his gen ed requirements with other APs like APUSH.</p>
<p>I know that at least some of our AP teachers had PhDs.</p>