<p>An Arkansas newspaper tells what good its high schools are doing in insuring its students obtain many hours of college credit before the students even graduate from high school, saving tuition money as the motivating factor. </p>
<p>High</a> School Students Complete Credits, Save Family Finances</p>
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Students don't have to be whiz kids to earn college credit while in high school. In fact, for many of these tests, you only need to answer 40 to 50 percent of the questions correctly in order to start shrinking your tuition bill
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<p>Does it actually save you tuition in the better schools, since they'll require to still take the same amount of credits anyway? </p>
<p>I mean, when they offer you financial aid based on 12 credits / semester, I assume that you're still going to take 12 credits for eight semesters regardless -- you just have a head start. Furthermore a lot of schools' policies seem to be that you can't use AP credits to fulfill the "number of credits required" portion of a major, or to fulfill a "number of credits required" portion of core requirements, just to do away with prerequisite courses.</p>
<p>So if they required you take three years of a foreign language and you're already placed into a third year or fourth year course due to AP credits ... well, for the better schools anyway you'll probably end up doing graduate-level work to fulfill your course requirements.</p>
<p>Advanced placement, in terms of getting into a harder course (as you often do at the better schools) or getting additional credit (as you don't often do at the 'better' schools), really seems like a bad thing to me. The only advantage to the student and college, as I see it, is that the student is taking a course based on a standard curriculum to prep for a standard exam that can help show whether a student is ready for college-level work, much like O-Levels might.</p>
<p>Why place out of a course you've taken already and waste that 4.0 that you could have had on your COLLEGE gpa, which matters much more than any high school gpa ever could.</p>
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much like O-Levels might.
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<p>You take the O-levels when you're 16 ... I really don't see how it shows you're ready for college-level work ... polytechnic level work maybe. I moved back from Singapore to the US because I couldn't stand the stifling O-level system -- it doesn't do much to encourage creative thinking.</p>
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Why place out of a course you've taken already and waste that 4.0 that you could have had on your COLLEGE gpa, which matters much more than any high school gpa ever could.
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<p>Employers and graduate schools, are still somewhat like undergraduate admissions committees. When comparing two applicants, one with a 3.55 GPA with graduate-level work in his 3rd and 4th years and one with a 4.0 GPA with lower-level work, guess what -- employers and professional schools want students with a high degree of specialisation. The biggest complaint about college qualifications today is that it's producing students who are "a jack of all trades, master of none."</p>
<p>Strike that –*I meant A levels. (O-levels are the basic GCSE, whereas A-levels are needed for Oxbridge/LSE admittance, right?)</p>
<p>A liberal arts education provides just that: as a jack-of-all trades, you can master any number that you want, simply because you've been equipped with all the tools to do so. Learning how to research, write, and think are the hallmarks of the generalist education, and will serve you better than a specific technical education would, at least for those with advanced degree plans.</p>
<p>i don't think it's about saving money. It's about having more freedom in course load selection</p>
<p>plus, many colleges have a cap on the number of AP credits you can have
also, many colleges are upping their requirements. you need at least a 4 for almost any good college these days, and some are upping it to 5</p>
<p>sure, you only need about 50% to pass, and 70% to get a 5, but the AP test is HARD. You need to know your stuff. I guess it varies a lot on what test you are talking about. there's a big difference between AP Calc BC and AP Government, but college requirements many times reflect this.</p>
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70% to get a 5
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<p>Closer to 30% for a 3 and 50% for a 5 in some instances. I got half the free response wrong, totally skipped one question, and probably 10 wrong on the multiple choice, for AP Calc, and till got a 5. </p>
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Learning how to research, write, and think are the hallmarks of the generalist education, and will serve you better than a specific technical education would, at least for those with advanced degree plans.
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<p>Yes, but if you've mastered that on top of specialisation then you'll be especially attractive over the other applicant who has a higher GPA whose courses you've essentially taken, plus way more. </p>
<p>I like being a jack of all trades too -- I thrive on being multidisciplinary, but achieving shallow mastery is certainly less attractive than achieving full mastery in the same areas. A person who places out of a class won't be disadvantaged.</p>
<p>JohnC makes a good point: the AP tests only require 60%-ish for a 5 (some tests require more, others require less) because they test on such a wide range of topics.</p>
<p>I, for one, am glad that I can take AP tests to eliminate otherwise-required courses, because I want to take language classes. If I had to take care of math and science requirements first semester, I would not be able to start the language tracks I want to follow, and language is significantly more difficult to make up lost time for than other subjects.</p>
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Strike that –*I meant A levels. (O-levels are the basic GCSE, whereas A-levels are needed for Oxbridge/LSE admittance, right?)
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O levels are taken at 15-16 years old and are based on a 2 year curriculum stated at 14-15 years old. A levels are taken at 17-18 years old and are based on a 2 year curriculum started after O-levels. A-levels are required for entry into all british Universities - not just Oxbridge/LSE.</p>
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O levels are taken at 15-16 years old and are based on a 2 year curriculum stated at 14-15 years old.
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<p>Is that how it works in Britain? In Singapore, O-levels are a culmination of lower secondary school (ages 13-16) while A-levels are a culmination of upper-secondary school (aka Junior College), taken ages 17-18. A large part of our education system still has relics from our former British overlords, so I'm not sure which part is similar and which is dissimilar.</p>
<p>More GE credit = more choice in electives. I guess if you cared about getting the A, you could just forfeit credit. If you want to refresh your memory on the material, just audit the class. Sometimes what you're placing out of are the weeder classes, which is generally awesome :D</p>
<p>After my first year of calc and after a three month hiatus over the summer I felt really overwhelmed by the amount of things I <em>thought</em> I had forgotten when I did my second year (in a dual-enrollment programme, since my school doesn't offer BC). Actually, it came back pretty easily when I did the homework -- I might have needed a bit more the first two weeks to do a bit of re-deriving, but as with all concepts that are learnt, it seems that a necessary process of learning is forgetting what you've learnt and learning it again.</p>