AP Calc AB. How is different from BC?
AP Psychology. Is it a lot of work?
AP World History. Is it similar to the amount of APUSH notes/work?
AP Biology. Easier/harder than AP Chem/Physics?
AP Gov. I heard it was a lot easier than APUSH with less work. Is this true?
AP English Lit. How much poetry is read?
Spanish 4. Is it a big jump from Spanish 3?
I know all school are different but what are some of your experiences taking these classes.
Based on my children:
One son took Calc BC, in our school, it’s the highest course and is supposedly more difficult than AB.
AP Psych - my youngest son took it and really enjoyed it. It’s a lot of memorization.
AP World History isn’t offered in our school but I have heard it’s less work than APUSH.
AP Bio - my one son dropped this one but continued in AP Physics C. He preferred math based classes. I have heard that the bio is easier if you are not math gifted.
AP Gov - appears to be less work than APUSH. S17 is currently taking it and doesn’t seem to have as much work as an APUSH class.
Don’t know about the others.
Thanks!
From my experience:
AP Psychology: I’m currently taking this course and I enjoy it. Sometimes it can seem like the workload is a lot (at least with my teacher) but if you have good time management skills it shouldn’t be too bad.
AP Eng Lit: I’m currently taking this course and I love it, but that might just be because I’ve always loved reading. I don’t know if the amount of poetry read varies with the teacher, but my teacher is only dedicating a month to studying poetry. Last semester and part of this semester for me was all book/short story reading.
AP Calc AB. How is different from BC? - It depends on how the school teaches it for what the exact content in the course entails, but BC is in general harder than AB. At my school district, AB is the equivalent of a Calc I course at a university, while BC is both Calc I and Calc II, but in the same amount of time. Other schools say AB is Calc I and BC is Calc II.
AP Psychology. Is it a lot of work? - It is usually considered one of the easier AP classes, but it does take some time commitment to memorize all the terms and concepts introduced.
AP World History. Is it similar to the amount of APUSH notes/work? - At my school, World History was harder, but most schools are the opposite. They both usually require a good deal of out of class work/studying.
AP Biology. Easier/harder than AP Chem/Physics? - Haven’t taken these AP’s, but I have taken the equivalent classes at a community college. I found Chem a lot easier than Bio because, if you understand the concepts, it requires a lot less memorization than Bio. I barely studied for Chem, but I had to study for Bio.
AP Gov. I heard it was a lot easier than APUSH with less work. Is this true? - Taking it now. So far, it has actually been very easy. All of the concepts are easy to grasp, and while there is some memorization, there is a lot less than APUSH.
AP English Lit. How much poetry is read? - Depends on how the teacher wants to teach it. The teacher at our school dedicates at least half of the year to it, with several poem analyses a week and over the weekend. I think they usually analyze 60-70 poems in total. However, this may be a high number, as our Lit teacher is known as one of the harshest teachers in the school.
Spanish 4. Is it a big jump from Spanish 3? - It definitely was for me. Spanish III was a lot of vocabulary memorization and learning different tenses, with tests every week or two. Spanish IV was reading books, articles, or short stories in Spanish and answering questions made to be like the AP test. The audio listening also went from super slow speaking to normal speed/fairly quick speaking with some annoying background noise thrown in. If my best friend wasn’t a native Spanish speaker and taking the class with me, it would be really tough without a lot of outside studying and review.
Hope this helped (and didn’t scare you away from taking any cool classes).
Thank you @Dax123 that was a lot of help.
Bump
No need to bump the thread.
I’ve taken a couple of those classes. AP GOPO was pretty straightforward–not easy, though. The AP test was easier than the course, I would say. Just a lot of info to trudge through.
Calc AB introduces you to integrals, differentiation, summation, and various other things. You learn the parts of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, which is very important-sounding. When you take the BC exam (if.), you’ll actually get an AB subscore. BC is more complex applications of integrals/differentiation. Integrals galore. Sequences come up as well.
Based on my son’s and his friend’s experiences: Calc AB vs BC…the higher math track kids take BC. Those that had more difficulty in Trig/Pre-calc take AB. BC is a two block course thus taken every day. AB is taken every other day. AP Gov has totally depended on the teacher. There are two teachers in his school and one class has several kids with A’s, the other maybe 3. AP Psych: a lot of work for some kids, but doable with reading and memorization. AP Lit is known as a class where it’s very hard to get a 4 or higher, again depends on the teacher. Our school has better than average results. If you are aiming for 4s or higher on the exam, the college board lists the distribution for all courses. Ask teachers what the distribution is like at your school.
AP Calc AB- much easier than BC. If you’re good at math you’ll be fine.
AP Psychology- Shouldn’t be a lot of work unless the teacher makes it. You can just read Barrons and be prepared tbh.
AP World History- Depends on the teacher, but it covers a lot of material broadly. APUSH is more in-depth. APWH has a lot of patterns and comparison which is also unique.
AP Biology- easier conceptually than Chem/phys for most. Depends on the teacher how much you have to read/memorize but it’s perfectly manageable.
AP Gov- Depends on teacher. Should mainly be common knowledge/sense.
AP English Lit- At my school we only did a month of poetry. It’s not like poetry is very work intensive anyways, but depends on the teacher. You will probably read more short stories than poetry.
Spanish 4- if you covered all the core grammatical concepts in 4, you shouldn’t have to learn a lot more in 4. Once again depends on your curriculum and structure (ask some people in Spanish 4 right now about the level difference).
AP Bio is generally considered easier than AP Chem and AP Physics C. However it’s still a lot of work and involves a lot of memorization. It really depends on what your strengths are, and I think it varies from person to person enough that the easiest AP science for you is probably whichever type of science you found easiest in the past.
AP Calc AB vs BC: I’ve heard that BC is a LOT more work. I’m not sure about the concepts, but the workload is definitely heavier (and the class pace is faster)
AP Bio: I’ve definitely heard from my friends that it’s much easier than AP Chem and AP Physics C. However, this was when there was a new teacher teaching the class, and the workload was very light. I hear it’s more challenging now (but not as challenging as AP Chem)
Spanish 4 vs Spanish 3: Spanish 3 focuses on learning Spanish (grammar + vocab) while Spanish 4 (should) focus more on using Spanish (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Personally I didn’t struggle much in the class, but if you excelled in grammar/vocab and not so much in other aspects of Spanish, it’ll be challenging for you.