What AP courses are missing?

<p>Can you think of any subjects that the collegeboard could make an AP course out of and that you would enjoy taking?</p>

<p>Finance\ stocks\ business type ap. Ive taken economics and it doesnt cover that</p>

<p>Philosophy, Sociology, Korean Language, Astronomy!</p>

<p>Astronomy would be cool. I would love more history, maybe AP Asian history or AP Ancient History? I could see AP Finance or something being really popular, although I wouldn’t want to take it.</p>

<p>AP Ancient History and AP Astronomy would be cool. Personally I’d like more specific science APs, like Microbiology, Physiology, Thermodynamics, etc.</p>

<p>Maybe some sort of law/justice AP. Or forensic science.</p>

<p>Some sort of engineering.</p>

<p>Restore Computer Science AB (Computer Science A does not cover enough to give subject credit at many schools).</p>

<p>Replace Statistics with calculus-based Statistics.</p>

<p>Eliminate useless ones like Human Geography, Environmental Science, Physics B. Don’t proliferate more useless AP tests.</p>

<p>Re-evaluate syllabuses to ensure that the material actually does match that of university freshman level courses in those subjects.</p>

<p>Aww don’t rip on Physics B lol
Would you like both reg Stats and Calc based Stats? </p>

<p>Yeah and thats something that has to be done as well</p>

<p>Well, the problem with Physics B is that majors that require physics generally require a calculus-based physics sequence. Biology majors are sometimes an exception, but since many are pre-meds, they may not be able to use the AP credit anyway.</p>

<p>Statistics has a similar problem in that calculus-based statistics is usually required for majors that require statistics (including such majors as economics and business).</p>

<p>Really, AP courses and tests should approximate the difficulty and rigor of actual college and university courses. It may well be that some students, having taken numerous AP courses in high school and self-studied other AP tests, find that actual college and university courses (even at non-selective community colleges) to be significantly more difficult than what they expect “college level” work to be based on their AP experience.</p>

<p>High schools do no favors to students by doing things like forcing students two years ahead in math to take calculus over two years (requiring completion of Calculus AB over a year, followed by Calculus BC the next year) instead of one (Calculus BC in the one year immediately following completion of precalculus). When the student who took the slow pace calculus over two years gets to university, the pace of the university math courses will be twice as fast as what s/he expects.</p>

<p>Calc 3 and linear algebra. More computer science. Creative writing.</p>

<p>Yeah, i see what you mean but if they really paralleled colleges courses not half as many people would be able to take them.</p>

<p>Honors Freshman year history i read 4-5 (freshman level) pages a week for class; when i took APUSH i had to read 30-35 college leveled pages and answer 120+ questions. (weekly) Granted that’s not exactly college level work it’s still a much greater improvement then ANYTHING my honors courses would offer. </p>

<p>I did get a 4 on the APUSH exam but mostly i can attribute that to the DBQ’s Documents.</p>

<p>AP AB calc at my school requires a 6 week summer course; meetings during the spring/winter breaks and a double period in my school. Still 3/4 of the people don’t pass.</p>

<p>I think AP humanities would be cool, I would also like to see more AP math classes</p>

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<p>AP is supposed to represent college level work for students advanced enough in the subject to be able to handle it while in high school – not high school level courses that are used to inflate weighted GPAs. When people get the impression that AP Statistics is equal to AP Calculus BC because they are both “AP”, then the “AP” label misleads.</p>

<p>The proliferation of low value AP courses and tests means that there is pressure on high school students to college AP courses and tests like trophies, even if they are not particularly useful.</p>

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<p>Something is wrong at your school. When I took Calculus BC in high school, it was done in a normal single period over one year immediately following precalculus (usually honors, since the slightly less than 10% of the students who were one year ahead in math were mostly in the honors math courses previously). No additional class time in the summer or break periods either.</p>

<p>I’d really appreciate AP Astronomy or AP Earth Science, and there’s definitely a need for more math ones. AP Discrete Mathematics, perhaps?</p>

<p>AP Human Anatomy, AP World Religions, AP African History, AP Human Rights Studies, AP Philosophy.</p>

<p>I think AP Ancient History and AP Asian History would be amazing to have. Definitely something I would sign up for. </p>

<p>Other courses could be AP Arabic.</p>

<p>For people suggesting AP Calc 3 or Linear Algebra, it would be impractical for the test to exist considering the number of students who have completed BC/Calc 2 before their senior year.
I’d appreciate an AP Astronomy, but I think an AP Discrete Math would be poorly structured</p>

<p>Higher math. At my school, 1/4 to 1/3 of kids finish Calc BC in junior year or before. AP Stats is all right, but I’d love to see an AP Multivariable Calculus or AP Modern Algebra, or even AP Differential Equations (or discrete math). I personally think the College Board focuses way too much on social science + language at the expense of math. I don’t necessarily mean that they should cut any of those, but, if that was the only way to get another AP math course, then I would advocate it. The problem with AP languages [excluding Latin] besides the common ones (Spanish and French) is that they’re not taken that much and/or most of the people taking them (especially German, Russian, Italian, Japanese) are native speakers.</p>

<p>To the poster above me, I see what you’re saying, but I believe a higher math course would be more widely taken than say, AP Japanese. Anyway, Linear Algebra doesn’t require calculus [at least, it would be entirely possible to create a challenging Algebra 3 AP course without using calculus] so it could be both an alternate to AP calc or something taken before/after/concurrently.</p>

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<p>I don’t think any of those are useless, but I see where you’re coming from… except with Physics B. Physics B is far from useless.</p>

<p>I also agree that Computer Science AB should be restored.</p>

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<p>The number of students who complete Calculus BC before senior year and will take multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and/or differential equations is probably smaller than the number of students who took Computer Science AB when it was offered (one every few years when I went to high school). And the number of high school teachers qualified to teach such courses is probably small also, so high schools that have students looking for such courses will probably tell them to go to the community college or arrange for dual enrollment (in either case, the students get real college credit, so no AP credit is needed).</p>

<p>Discrete math is a specialty course for CS and math majors; curricular variation in universities may be greater than in other math courses. Also, some universities use it as a gateway/transition/practice course for proofs used in more advanced math courses, so the expected level of teaching in a high school environment may not be adequate.</p>

<p>Introductory astronomy in universities usually comes in either a relatively easy course for non-majors to use only as breadth, or a course for majors that requires a year of physics (at least AP Physics C level if not more). The former would be another low value AP along the lines of Environmental Science, Statistics, or Physics B, while the latter would likely not have many high school students able to take it.</p>

<p>^To the poster above me, as I said Linear Algebra doesn’t require calculus [at least, it would be entirely possible to create a challenging Algebra 3 AP course without using calculus] so it could be both an alternate to AP calc or something taken before/after/concurrently. In fact, some of the more challenging aspects of precalculus that are not used in AP Calc could be included in Algebra 3 AP. For example, perhaps the kind of math on AMC competitions; I’m not saying the course should be tailored towards competition math, but there are several areas of math that competitions have that do not require calculus but are still extremely challenging. </p>

<p>There could easily be a Geometry AP, actually.</p>

<p>Ucbal,</p>

<p>The average person in any given AP class is going to get an ACT score between 18-24
(with the FEW high exceptions of course) (were dem genuises alrighttttt)</p>

<p>They need all of that extra time to study seeing as nobody can pass anyway. If they got rid of the lower leveled AP classes or even higher ones taught at a slower pace it would leave me going from reading 10 pages a week to college level work. It would mean going from alg2/trig to Pre-calc in college.</p>