Daughter is having scheduling issues as a junior in high school. She wants to take AP computer science. But due to other challening class, she is having difficulty to fit in this class. I told het that she can take a computer intro class at a local community college that is offered on line. In addition our local state university is offering a similar in classroom class in summer but only for 6 weeks. I do not know if these classes are AP equivalent or not. How do we find it out?
Because she attends a prep school, she will miss her state university class by one week.
Is there any other alternative people can suggest. Thanks
She can self study the course at http://cs10.org/ which is one of the model courses for AP CS principles.
Depending on her future plans, a college intro computer science course may be more useful than an AP CS course. Some colleges will more readily give credit for one than the other, if that is the goal.
A summer camp or program in CS that isn’t a college class or AP might be interesting as well (or instead).
Due to variations in how colleges organize their introductory CS courses, one cannot rely on getting subject credit for AP scores or transferred introductory CS college courses. Best to think of taking CS while in high school as a means of getting an overview of the field (useful for both potential CS majors and those not intending to major in CS) and gauge whether one is interested in majoring in CS in college. For this purpose, AP CS principles or a college course on which AP CS principles uses as a suggested model is more useful than AP CS A and similar college courses.
I took a research lab course at my high school that required AP CS as a prerequisite, but hadn’t taken AP CS (I had taken our foundations CS class during one summer, which is a pre-req to AP CS at my high school). What I did was I took a class at the local community college over the summer before my senior year, and during my junior year, I approached the lab directors (who teach AP CS) with the course description and syllabi of several of the CS classes at the college, and they helped me decide. I’m a junior CS major in college now, and I had no problem getting the CS class to transfer once I started college, and was able to start with Data Structures.
Lots of colleges have non-credit summer coding camps, which might fit better into her schedule than a full CS course. If she’s planning to major in CS in college, it’s not necessary for her to take AP CS in high school. Plenty of CS majors hit college without any programming courses. As long as she’s completed a rigorous math sequence she’ll be fine. There are plenty of online resources if she wants to try to learn programming on her own (most students these days start with Java and move on from there, but really she can start with whatever interests her the most).
Does her high school allow seniors to take AP CS? If so, she can just wait until senior year.
If she’s really keen for both the knowledge and the credit, an intro CS course online through her local community college is a fine option. The local state university 6-week course you mention is probably a semester-equivalent course, meaning it will be pretty fast-paced to get through all the work but should still result in the same credit as a full semester course. Depending on her aptitude and level of interest, that could be fine or it could be too much.
AP CS principles seems to give an introduction to thinking computationally, and does not seem to give a good overview of the field (which is something I think is too to be useful ambitious as a first course in computer science). I do agree though it is not too important to replicate AP Computer Science, and that high school is a great time to be flexible in exploring the field.
@OHMomof2 - no time for cs summer class as she is doing her research internship in genetics, no she wants to major in CS therefore she is picking the CS class.
@ucbalumnus Not interested in AP transfer, she wants to build CS knowledge base as next 2018 summer research requires CS programming requirements.
thanks for the link http://cs10.org/ this might be doable let us see.
If she already has some knowledge of CS, she may want to go through http://cs61a.org/ on her own.
@traveler98 , if she can not take it she will take it in Senior year. Next year she is taking Honors BC Calculus and then AP linear Algebra and Multi variable Calc in 12t h grade.
Local university course is free as she won a CTY scholarship due to scoring > 1500 in SAT 1 in junior high but due to summer research she may end up taking the online course.
@warbrain she is pushing AP courses in all subjects as a junior and that is why a full schedule is creating trouble as she enjoys it all.