Interesting, I was thinking the opposite - how economic realities make early graduation a strong necessity for those with fewer means. But I suppose, then you have issue that the ability to do so, might be stronger for the affluent?
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I think graduation rates are higher at ‘rich kid’ schools - and that kids from affluent families are better prepared and overall will struggle less. They have the means to take prep classes and hire private tutors.
I may be wrong but it’s my hypothesis. I’m sure affluent kids like mine will do better even at the publics because if this. They likely had a more formal steering to begin with.
Is that for certain type of colleges with whatever common characteristics?
I admit to not having heard that before, but our family’s social and geographic circle could very well represent a “bubble” that has isolated me from realizing that graduation rates are abysmal much elsewhere/other types of colleges?
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I’m realizing that I might have interpreted the question/topic wrong and having a “different” conversation.
I had translated graduating the ambiguous term “quickly” with “early”, instead of “timely”, which might have been the intended question?
Yes, I can see how students from affluent families would be better prepared to graduate timely, while there is stronger pressure on less affluent families for kids to graduate early.
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However, if one has financially stretched to the point of needing maximum loans and maximum student work earnings to barely afford college, that increases the risk of dropping out due to running out of money. It also increases the risk of delayed graduation because the student can take only 12 credits instead of 15-16 per semester due to the need to work more to earn money. This is likely much more common than the rich slacker situation.
Probably the “optimal” place in terms of financial means relating to timely graduation is to have enough money that one is not worried about running out of money or has to work unreasonable hours to earn the money to pay for school, but also knows that money is not infinite in terms of paying for many extra semesters.
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I highlighted the higher level private schools with lots of full pay. They may meet need but they’re loaded with the wealthy. They have the highest graduation rates. Their pockets are deep beyond what many of us can imagine. Their kids don’t want for anything financially.
Combine that with their kids are tippy top to begin with and the schools themselves are rich and provide resources others can’t match.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate
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Was curious so just looked up the CDS of one of the schools on @tsbna44’s US News list (latest data was fall 2015 cohort).
Graduating in 4 years:
Pell-Grant: 83.6%
Subsidized Stafford (no Pell): 84.6%
Neither: 86.2%
Graduating in 5 years:
Pell-Grant: 91.0%
Subsidized Stafford (no Pell): 90.1%
Neither: 91.6%
Graduating in 6 years:
Pell-Grant: 92.6%
Subsidized Stafford (no Pell): 91.9%
Neither: 93.1%
At least for that cohort, I appears 4-year rates are affected by economic circumstances. There is a marked improvement by year 5, and the gap does narrow substantially.
Two of my kids took a lot of AP classes/exams. One was able to graduate a year early from an LAC with a major and a minor that was just a class or two short of a second major, and the other got a co-terminal BS and Masters in engineering in 4 years and a summer. So the AP courses did get them through their chosen paths more quickly.
I would have been annoyed to spend all that money on AP exams and have them not get credit and repeat the same material in college. I got really tired of paying the college board for exams over my kids’ high school careers (and there were a few instances where they took a course but skipped the exam —AP Lit is one-most schools don’t give credit for both Lit and Lang). Total cost was at least $1000 but in the end that’s less than additional semesters of college would have been so I can’t complain.
But I wouldn’t have paid for the exams if I hadn’t expected my kids to get credit. And I bet College Board makes a lot of money that way. If fewer and fewer schools give credit, College Board will need to find another income stream to replace all that.
My kids didn’t have the option for ‘5 or 6 years’ because of scholarship money. Most of it was for ‘8 consecutive semesters’ and required full time registration (at least 12 credits)
DD2 needed 131 credits to graduate (engineering). She entered with zero AP/DE credits and started Calc and Chemistry at the 101 level. She just did the work required for each class and each semester (usually 16-17 credits). She didn’t take many (any?) electives until the last semester senior year. If she’d had any AP/DE credits, they only would have helped that last semester (when I know she took tennis and Spanish just to get to 131 credits) but she had to take a full time semester that last semester anyway because she needed her athletic and school scholarships. Her scholarships only lasted for 8 semesters so she had to graduate in 8 semesters. She didn’t have the option to stretch it out, drop classes, or change majors (after her first year).
DD1 also had the 8 semester requirement, although she did take one spring semester off to do a Disney ‘internship’ (it’s called the college program but no college credits given). She did take summer classes one summer at a local college and transferred the credits to her school to graduate in that 8th semester and not have to take an extra semester.
Sooo, I think students take longer to graduate because they don’t have the money constraints my kids had. Now my kids had many hs friends who graduated in less than 4 years because of AP classes, the requirement FL has that student at public schools take at least 9 credits in the summer, and the ease of going to school full time without having to work because it’s pretty cheap to attend public schools (and bright futures and other scholarship programs).
This was certainly our situation. My youngest started with ~60 credits and could easily have graduated in 3 years. But she wanted to explore many topics (double major plus 2 minors) and enjoy the college experience. We had started a 529 before she was born and are in the fortunate position (along with Purdue’s frozen tuition) that an extra year was a viable choice. This is probably not true for many families.
“Save money with AP exams” is also what I find to be an often misleading claim. You need to attend a college that accepts the exam scores for credit and has a program with a graduation sequence that has no dependencies that extends the graduation time. My oldest could have come in with a ton of AP humanities/art/history credits and it would have not helped get through an Engineering program with multiple 7-course dependency sequences. A more typical 3-5 AP course program in high school seems pretty unlikely to accelerate graduation in many programs, which is usually the only way to save money. Taking only 12 credits, or taking electives instead of required courses, rarely saves any money. But “take AP courses, save money” is still something I often hear.
Fwiw, Purdue’s average time to BS graduation has gone from 4.26 to 3.91 years between 2013 and 2022.
Fwiw. I looked at the source cited by Coursera and see nothing but “here’s how long it took in this one year”. Nothing about trends over time, other than Coursera’s “used to take” handwaving. IMO, it’s a sales pitch (“Request more information about bachelor’s degrees from top universities on Coursera”) masquerading as “research”.
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Dito in our case. Our daughter had a whole bunch of AP 5’s lined up, and we too had been fortunate to more than sufficiently grow her 529 from birth.
Even without losing two semesters of “traditional” college experience to CoViD, she would still have been keen to spend the four full years exploring/deeping the studies in multiple completely unrelated disciplines, rather to minimize college time on a single major. (Admittedly, the stereotype “privilege” scenario!)
Absolutely no regrets on taking all those AP classes/exams, though:
While in (public) high school, they were the best academic fit for her, with in-class atmospheres and teacher interaction that was reflective of the type of students.
And in college, the AP credits were helpful in skipping over some 101 classes towards Minors, and to fulfill some of the general education/distribution requirements that would otherwise have filled her course schedule
As a result, her calendar freed up, allowing her to seek out more interesting courses, or preferred professors, that otherwise would have clashed with a “prescribed” course-lineup.
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I did not write the quotation that you attributed to me. It was quoted by @1NJParent from a Coursera page.
I highlighted, clicked ‘quote’ and that’s what appeared.
Here is an older thread on the use of AP/IB credit:
With the caveat that the forum population is not necessarily representative of the overall college student population, it does appear that a popular use of AP/IB credit for forum users was to replace introductory level courses with more advanced courses and/or additional free electives within one’s eight semesters. Using it to graduate in fewer than eight semesters seemed to be less common.
So it was not “saving money” as much as getting more for one’s money in terms of additional advanced or elective courses that one would otherwise not be able to take.
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Perfect way of summarizing it, IMO!
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My son went in with all his general ed classes covered by AP and IB classes. He could have finished his engineering in 3.5 years. He started at Calc 1, so faster wasn’t going to happen. He has a 10 semester scholarship and is taking additional electives in things that interest him, while taking lighter semesters in the fall to make room for marching band time.
My daughter has most of the same AP and IB courses that he did and we have spent hours looking for other schools that would give her a similar experience. So many give credit, but they aren’t in the right gen ed category, so she is left needing a bunch still. She has a lot of interests that she wants to explore in college, so wants the AP/IB to give the most bang for the buck.
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My two kids did well with AP classes. One was able to double major and get a minor in four years. The second child will start college in the fall and is setup to be able to get her HS Social Studies & History certification and a minor in ASL. She probably will be able to add another area as well.
But more importantly child number two’s school does parking permits based on what year you are and she will coming in as a sophomore which means a lot better parking spot.
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Note that some colleges distinguish between class level (based on semesters since entry) and class standing (by credits) for registration priority and such. Also, some give priority to lower class level or standing for some lower level courses that frosh / soph prospective majors need over juniors/ seniors looking for electives.
So the assumption that AP credit always helps with registration may not be correct everywhere.
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My eldest attended an AP magnate program for high school (APs not being universally available here in Canada). Despite receiving a 5 on all 3 of the AP exams he wrote, he didn’t end up receiving any transfer credit for them because the university he chose to attend doesn’t allow AP/IB transfer credit for courses required for the major and the ones he took were. The university he attends will only grant credit for up to a maximum of 6 elective courses with a minimum exam score of 4 which is just over a semester’s worth of credits (and more than his high school allows students to take without special permission). So while taking AP courses did offer excellent preparation for transitioning to university, they didn’t end up saving him any time.
Interestingly he did say that there wasn’t fully a 1:1 correspondence between the material the AP courses covered and the equivalent first year university courses designed for his major, instead being more equivalent to 3/4 of the semester. That’s no doubt why this university doesn’t permit transfer credit for courses in the major (though other universities do).
He’s also graduating in 5 years instead of 4 due to opting for the co-op stream of his program which incorporates 2 study semesters in addition to 2 spring/summer semesters. While that means he will be graduating a year later, it has also allowed him to acquire more research experience to enhance his applications for graduate school (and also earn some money to help fund it).
For the colleges my kids targeted and what our goals are for their college education, no, we did not think APs should be used to graduate in less than 4years. Graduating early due to APs isn’t even allowed at many highly selective schools: APs are used as all or part of the placement into higher level classes and allow for the student to take more depth and/or breadth over the course of their 4 years. (For the schools that use AP scores as a part of placement).
Example would be the science guru who places out of intro chem and physics, starts in Orgo and has lots more available space to take many high level science courses, or even pursue a masters/second degree in 4yrs, or just because they are premed and love science and want to take as many upper level science courses as possible before entering the very structured medschool curriculum.
Alternatively, APs are useful to secure a rigorous preparation so one is more ready for the college level, with a plan to repeat to increase the chances of success(such as the premed who is good but not off the charts at science, who repeats Chem in college despite getting a 4 or 5 on the AP), to jump-start a good college gpa.
Both of these AP uses—to place out or with a plan of repeating—are valid and beneficial, in my opinion, and are not wasting the AP curriculum and experience.
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