<p>It would probably have few students taking it because:</p>
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<li> Majors in university that require linear algebra generally require calculus, but not the reverse, so most students will choose calculus first. (And math-fearing students who will major in humanities won’t want to take linear algebra since it is not required for their majors.)</li>
<li> At semester system universities, linear algebra is often combined with differential equations in one course; someone who has credit for just linear algebra would have to partially repeat the course.</li>
<li> Since linear algebra is not a full year course in university, advanced math students may forego the likely year-long high school course and take it over a shorter period of time at community college, giving them time to also take multivariable calculus and differential equations as well.</li>
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<p>Covering what? “Geometry” describes either a high school sophomore level course, or a university junior/senior level course typically requiring junior level real analysis, abstract algebra, and/or linear algebra (with more proofs and theory). Neither seems appropriate for an AP course and test that is supposed to represent university freshman level work.</p>
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<p>Looks like your school should concentrate on giving everyone a good high school education so that they can be prepared for university level work, or other post-secondary activities (e.g. education for skilled trades). That most students fail at university level work at one fourth speed (the double period Calculus AB you described) indicates that your school is failing to prepare them properly for even community college.</p>
<p>I see where you’re coming from but I disagree with a couple of your points: </p>
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<p>The college equivalent of Calculus AB is a one-semester course. Therefore, the arguments against linear algebra go against Calculus AB as well, yet, lots of people take it. I think you might be surprised at how many people would opt to take Algebra instead of Calc, since many of them might not even be math/science majors. </p>
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<p>I don’t mean your typical geometry course. In hindsight, this might be rather useless for college credit, but some other AP tests (Human Geography and Environmental Science come to mind) aren’t very useful for credit either. However, if you look at AMC, AIME, USAMO, IMO, etc. (or some of the Olympiads dedicated specifically to Geometry) there are plenty of topics in geometry that do not require any mathematical knowledge above Precalculus to understand yet make for far more challenging questions than the kind you see in your typical Calculus BC course. I can show you pages if you want, but trust me, there is a lot of geometry not covered in sophomore year that is highly advanced without requiring calculus. However it probably wouldn’t be equivalent to a college geometry course either; this kind of geometry is the kind most people, even math majors, never learn or are exposed to very little, unless they are proactive about it and learn it on their own, or take math olympiad/other special classes.</p>
<p>Math AP’s would be nice, but most people don’t start out high school taking a Math AP class. Also even community colleges require Calculus III before linear algebra so the math track would look kinda like this:
-Algebra I
-Geometry
-Algebra II
-PreCalculus
-Calc AB/ Statistics
-Calc BC
-Calculus III
-Differential Equations/ Linear Algebra</p>
<p>Those of you who manage to make it this far (or even up to Calc 3) represent a very MINISCULE portion of the high school population. How many schools outside CC or your district do you know that even consider offering post-high school classes (via another University)?</p>
<p>Though it would be nice for there to be AP Organic Chem (with AP Chemistry becoming AP General Chem) :)</p>
<p>What majors require or recommend linear algebra but not calculus?</p>
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<p>Well, HG and ES are two APs that are among the ones that should probably be dumped.</p>
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<p>While it is true that there are plenty of math problems in geometry suitable for math competitions at the high school or university freshman level, there really is not a point to having an AP course and test for them, since those problems are not part of the university freshman (or sophomore) math curriculum for any major.</p>
<p>The whole point of AP is to allow advanced high school students to show that they have mastered university freshman level work so that they can go directly to more advanced courses. Math competition problems will be interesting for students good in math, but there is no point in having an AP test based on such math problems.</p>
<p>Advanced math is very needed. You would be surprised at how many seniors are not taking a math at all because they completed math BC as a Junior. Additionally, more and more schools are doing Algebra in 6th grade. In our district, this is how it looks:
6th- Algebra
7th Geometry
8th Alg II
9th Pre-Calc/ AP Stats
10th BC Calc
11th Community College or nothing
12th Community College or nothing</p>
<p>Oh, and they are working on a new computer course, but my understanding is that it is to cover the “intro to computers” type of course that most colleges require, not another programming course.</p>
<p>I don’t think many schools have people qualified to teach Arabic, Urdu or Swahili/Bantu. And I also don’t think there would be many people who are even interested enough to take the exams.</p>
<p>Based on their common presence in “easy self study” lists, would it be reasonable to assume that these three are basically high school level material (maybe honors, maybe not), not college freshman level material that the AP courses and tests are supposed to replicate?</p>
<p>Yeah, but considering my school’s Regular/Honors courses (many teachers will play a “review game” which is go over test questions & answers day before we take it.) </p>
<p>I can’t say i remember my two years of regular Spanish but i do remember a lot from APUSH. </p>
<p>What’s supposed to be the middle ground between remedial (regular & honors courses) and freshman level college work? </p>
<p>And i don’t suppose US Gov is on one of those easy self study lists eh? i’m self studying it this year lmao and taking English Lang as a course.</p>
<p>Regular high school work should be solid preparation for post-secondary education, including university level work.</p>
<p>Honors high school work should be for the top students preparing for university level work. AP should represent mastery of university freshman level work in that subject, often at the end of a sequence of regular or honors high school courses (e.g. in English, math, and foreign language).</p>
<p>Your high school needs to fix its regular and honors courses in the core subjects (English, math, history, foreign languages, biology/chemistry/physics) before trying to polish its image with non-core APs like AP Statistics, AP Environmental Science, AP Human Geography, etc…</p>
<p>Around 16% of high school students graduate having taken an AP Calculus class, 70,000 being the number of students that take the Calculus BC exam. Given that on average 20,000 students take AP French (too lazy to look up other AP exam stats), I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to advocate for more advanced AP Math Courses, seeing as there would be a more than reasonable demand. Alas, being more of a social science person, what I truly yearn for are more advanced classes in Economics and a wider array of AP Social Science courses. AP Economics, both Macro and Micro, are very easy and can be taken by freshmen in a single year. I would love to then have been able to take courses like AP International Political Economy and AP Developmental Economics. Other suggestions that have been mentioned such as AP Human Rights/Humanitarian Law would be exquisite. Some people here are bashing courses like AP Human Geography and AP Psych for not being true college level courses. I think that this is unfair, especially seeing as they are meant to be taught in one semester, like they are in college. If a school is taking a whole year to teach the course then it is dumbing down the AP. I actually think that the cure to this would be the creation of more semester long courses. Such would encourage students to take semester-long AP’s in the time span they are supposed to, because that would be the only way to take the wide variety that would be offered.</p>
<p>AP International Relations, AP Anatomy and Physiology, AP Asian History, and AP African History! Plus AP Earth Science would be pretty good. Like people have said before, Enviro Sci doesn’t go deep enough into Earth Sciences.</p>
<p>harvardhopeful13, I think you just described my dream schedule :D. I think AP Environmental could maybe be split inti two different AP’s, one concentrating on the hard science and the other on the more social and political issues. That’s what many colleges actually tend to do…</p>
<p>AP Geography. Human geo is kind of a dumb test, many schools don’t even offer credit.
and also AP Finance. There are NO business classes in AP! That leaves a huge hole in the AP course list. So many people go into business, how can you not have an AP business class?</p>
<p>What I can find on the College Board site is that probably around 25% of Calculus BC test takers are not in 12th grade. That is 17,500 who might benefit from post-Calculus-BC math AP tests.</p>
<p>However, many high schools are not equipped to teach such courses, so the number of students who could take a post-Calculus-BC math AP test is trimmed down by that limitation. And community college or dual enrollment makes sense for such math courses anyway – they are commonly offered, and provide real college credit.</p>
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<p>But slow pacing AP courses seems to be a common practice, based on comments on these forums. For example:</p>
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<li>Calculus AB, Statistics, Psychology, * Government, Environmental Science, Computer Science A (or even former AB) typically give credit for only a semester at universities that give credit for them, but are commonly full year courses at high schools.</li>
<li>Some high schools force students to take Calculus AB one year, then Calculus BC the next year; this is a disservice to the math superstars who reach calculus as high school juniors and can easily handle Calculus BC in one year.</li>
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<p>Probably because of curricular variation in business major programs. Finance is not commonly offered as a freshman level course. The most common freshman level business courses are accounting and business law, though some universities have different courses. Other lower division courses commonly taken by business majors are economics, calculus, and statistics (for which there already are APs, although if calculus-based statistics is required, the AP for that won’t count).</p>