Re: #98
However, that means that year long AP courses that are equivalent to semester courses in college (e.g. calculus AB, statistics, psychology, etc.) should be about 6 hours per week of work. If the workload is significantly higher for such courses, there may be excess busywork or inefficient use of time in those courses.
@ucbalumnus, my son will be doing AP Calc BC, AP Chem, and AP Physics next year in grade 12 (and possibly AP World History) so Iâm trying to get a sense of the workload. If I am understanding you correctly you are saying the typical university course is equivalent to 12 hours of work class + tutorial or lab + homework/assignments per week combined for a total of 60 hours per week (12 hrs x 5 courses). DS19âs school is semestered just like universities but they take 8 courses per year/4 courses per semester in grades 9-11. In grade 12 they are only required to take 6 courses though most students take 7 giving them 1 spare. Each class is 75 minutes long for a total of 6 1/4 hours of in class time per class per week. Does that mean he can expect to have 1 and a quarter hours of homework per course each night?
In the US, a typical university schedule is 15-16 credits, with each credit being equivalent to 3 hours of work per week, so total work is nominally 45-48 hours per week (including both in-class and out-of-class time). Most typical courses are around 4 credits.
Total time for a 4 credit semester course will be 180 hours (= 12 hours * 15 weeks).
Calculus BC (if taken starting just after precalculus) is equivalent to two semesters of college calculus, or 360 hours total. If it presumes previous completion of calculus AB, it is equivalent to one semester, or 180 hours total.
Physics 1, physics 2, physics C-M, physics C-E&M, chemistry, or world history is equivalent to a one semester college course, or 180 hours total.
Yikes! I just had another look at the AP equivalency tables for some of the schools DS19 is thinking of applying to. AP Chem and AP Calculus BC give 2 semester credits each and AP Physics 1 gives 1 semester credit. Iâm wondering how they are going to fit all that in into one semester of high school. The AP program at DSâs school accelerates the regular curriculum for grades 9-11 so they will have covered a good portion of the regular grade 12 curriculum this year. That will give them a head start for the AP material next year I guess, but it still seems like an awful lot to cram into one semester. AP is new at DSâs school and up until now the courses have been Pre-AP. Next year will be the first time teachers will be teaching actual AP courses with the exception of AP English Comp which is being offered this year. I really have no reference for judging how intense the courses will be.
You also canât judge how likely your kid is to pass with a high enough score to get credit if the teachers are in their first year teaching â he may not get all the credits you think he will.
True though we are looking at the value of AP as being better university prep rather than expecting university credit. His high school credit is based on the regular grade 12 curriculum so how he does on the AP material will not impact his grades. On the other hand DSâs school is highly ranked nationally and number 1 in our district. There are bragging rights for the administration in question so I imagine the expectations for the teachers teaching the courses are going to be pretty high. Depending on what he chooses as his major, DS might decide to not even accept the transfer credits anyway. When I was in high school in the late 80âs we still had grade 13 in Ontario. I look at AP as being more equivalent to that. Having the foundation of the AP courses should make the transition to first year university a little easier for him.
The âtippy top schoolsâ often give completely different information. Some example quotes are below:
Harvard Admissions -
Stanford Admissions -
MIT Admissions -
What would be interesting though is what are the Number of AP classes taken by students admitted to those three schools.
I agree. I think schools say that but itâs not really true. They also say they want to see the highest rigor that is offered from the high school. So which is it?
I think those schools like interesting kids and some kids like that need time for their activities. Maybe skipping rigor for ECs is only accepted when the EC is particularly special. We have a friend whose daughter is an equestrian at a very high level and sheâs not bogged down with APs but Iâm sure sheâs interesting to colleges.
Parchment used to support this type of query. A few years ago, I looked at the Stanford admit rate vs # of AP classes among Parchment members with a 2000+ SAT and <7% class class rank. The acceptance rate appeared to almost flat line once hitting 4 APs classes, with no notable increases in admit rate, regardless of number of AP classes above 4. I listed some specific Parchment numbers for Brown in another post, which are quoted below. It looks like a median of ~3 AP classes among accepted students in this group.
0 AP â 25% accepted (22 accepted)
1 AP â 33% accepted (20 accepted)
2 AP â 20% accepted (16 accepted)
3 AP â 18% accepted (14 accepted)
4 AP â 20% accepted (20 accepted)
5 AP â 36% accepted (16 accepted)
6 AP â 33% accepted (9 accepted)
7 AP â 32% accepted (5 accepted)
8 AP â 36% accepted (5 accepted)
9 AP â 36% accepted (4 accepted)
Itâs not necessarily a contradiction. For example, the admissions section of Stanfordâs website says the following. They make it clear that they are looking for students who take challenging courses, but they also make it explicitly clear that this does not mean taking every possible advanced class. It can also be important why you are taking the courses and how it fits in with the full application. There are better ways to show the intellectual vitality they describe than trying to take the maximum possible number of AP classes.
See the suggestion in reply #73 to help make a more informed decision on whether to use AP credit for advanced placement.
Schools lie about some things. This really isnât one of them. They arenât saying skip the APs altogether. But the kid who took 3 a year, and spent their spare time getting a law passed in their state on an issue they cared about, or did some original research on butterflies that identified something previously unknown about their wing patterns â that kid is going to get in before the student who spent all their time on APs. The schools are trying to tell you â but people are too afraid to believe them.
@dad2020 âWhat would be interesting though is what are the Number of AP classes taken by students admitted to those three schools.â
I would bet that you it would not be too different from the one for Brown. Maybe leveling off at 5 or 6 APs. The idea that students need to take about 15 APs is wrong.
The year D1 graduated from high school, our school had 15 students admitted to Ivies. However, the student who took the most APs and had the highest gpa did not get admitted to any of them. His really didnât have any significant ECs, and was not a very interesting candidate. He would have been much better off to ease off on the course load and demonstrate some real interests in his free time.
I think if you are a student in a rural HS with few or no APs, you are not at a disadvantage for having taken none. Whereas if you are a student in an affluent suburb with lots of APs, youâd be expected to take more. But I still agree with @intparent and @Much2learn that itâs better to carefully tailor your APs to your interests and save time to really explore your interests in a meaningful way.
@data10 @intparent â there is a contradiction in the schoolsâ stories because the class rank and number of AP courses taken are related. For example, see the following data from Stanford:
https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/selection/profile16.html
If youâre outside the top 10% in class rank you have at most a 1% chance of being admitted. Well, how do you get into the top 10% in class rank? By taking a bunch of AP classes! For example, D18 has completed 4 APs and has a 4.0 UW GPA yet is sitting at 12% out of 700 kids. If she had taken one or two more AP classes in 9th-11th grade she would be in the top 10%. So she would have ended up with 10 total AP classes for HS (including the 4 APs senior year).
What theyâre telling us is not what theyâre actually doing.
So @droppedit, it seems like this is a problem that could be remedied by your HS limiting the number of AP classes a student can take, or not giving added weight to any AP classes over the recommended limit. Limit to say 5 or 6?
In Stanfordâs latest CDS, only 33% of the entering class submitted class rank. 25% submitted rank at Brown, 26% at Cornell and Yale, 29% at Princeton, etc, Harvard says they donât consider rank in their CDS. The type of HSs discussed in the article usually donât submit rank and/or make it optionalâŠ
More importantly, you are confusing cause and correlation. Nearly every section of the application is going to be better on average among applicants with a top 10% class rank than in applicants without one â transcript, test scores, LORs, essays, âintellectual vitalityâ and corresponding amazing out of classroom academic pursuits, etc. Even if class rank is not considered in the admission process, applicants with a top 10% class rank are going to have a tremendously higher acceptance rate than applicants who are not in the top 10%.
@data10 â well, Stanford better change its website to say, âPercent of Applicants who submitted class rankâ.
Isnât it likely college at least approximate the rank from the counselors comments and the school profile?