<p>Not necessarily. There is a broad spectrum across which colleges teach Stat, and the same is true for HS. The “easy” curve is based in part on the fact that not all high schools teach the exact same curriculum. Most topics will be covered, but some will be missed. (They might even be skipped bcos the teacher doesn’t understand the concept.) But the point is not to conclude that students didn’t master the material provided, bcos in some cases, the material is not even covered.</p>
<p>btw: that is one reason that the Math 2 ST also has a generous scaling.</p>
<p>And yes, Stats does have a mixture of academic types. At our HS, the “weaker” math students, including those aspiring to a juco or Cal State, take Stat senior year, while our stronger students take Stats along with PreCalc.</p>
<p>The “problem” of overentitled students believing that the world owes them a dream job upon graduation is really quite small IMO, and falls under #firstworldproblems. Most young adults are not overentitled and are willing to do whatever it takes.</p>
Maybe not at your son/daughter’s school but it was at my kid’s public if you took the class. FWIW, my son got a 3 on AB Calc and he is attending a top Ivy. ;)</p>
<p>While the OP may have some good points, she’s doing so in ways which betray a form of narrow-mindedness and lack of perspective due to the fact she’s still in high school and has not experienced full-time college life yet. I’ve seen this in plenty of high school juniors and seniors over the last 2 odd decades. </p>
<p>They usually come around once they receive grade reports for their first…or at the very latest…their second semester of undergrad. </p>
<p>As for the “college credits handed to them on a silver platter”…that’s not always the case…especially at many respectable/elite colleges. </p>
<p>First, some colleges/departments don’t grant any credits for AP courses because they feel the content covered doesn’t approach that of what’s covered in their intro courses. For instance, MIT’s biology, chemistry, and computer science grants no credits for any APs…even if one scores a 5. </p>
<p>Others may feel the AP credits are only worth elective credits rather than ones which fulfill some core distribution requirements…or one’s major. </p>
<p>While this may be good for undergrads who are just in college for the credential…those who may want more may feel those credits aren’t worth taking in the context of their own college’s course offerings/academic experience…especially if they don’t count towards core distribution or major requirements. </p>
<p>Moreover, if one is a pre-med or aspiring to some grad/professional schools…they may not count APs towards fulfillment of their core course requirements for admission. One must take the actual college courses…whether the intro course or a more advanced course.</p>
<p>fogfog, not only is the National Latin Exam incredibly easy, it asks questions about mythology and the like that have nothing to do with the Latin language. My youngest son got a medal every single year, beside a steady series of B’s and B-'s in Latin. (He stopped before the AP.)</p>
<p>I’m always surprised to hear about schools where no one passes the AP exams. It is certainly an expectation in our school on the part of the administration, the teachers and the students that everyone should pass. They always take sample exams before the official exam, so everyone is very aware of how much they are expected to know. Teachers usually recommend the review books as well. </p>
<p>One dirty little secret high schools don’t tell kids or parents though is that 3 is not a passing grade at the selective colleges.</p>
<p>I don’t believe AP exams are indicitive of how well a student will do in college. My oldest son also failed the Spanish AP exam, and I’m happy to report he graduated first in his college class.</p>
<p>AP exams are indicative of how well a student has mastered the tested material relative to his/her peers at the time of the exam. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>
<p>Not true for all school districts. Ours says that you must take the AP test if you want to have the AP designation show up on your transcript.</p>
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<p>Well, let’s say that you are a graduating senior. You know where you are attending college. You already have maxed out the number of AP credits that your college will accept. The five APs that you are taking at the end of 12th grade therefore count for nothing for you personally except for college course placement and bragging rights. And you already know that if you take Econ or Bio at college, you’ll be taking the classes there rather than using AP credits to place out, because your teachers in those subjects weren’t very good.</p>
<p>Your parents already paid for the AP tests, as the district required. They can’t get a refund. They can’t get the money donated to the school. </p>
<p>And that is another reason why a student may have the test paid for and not try at all.</p>
<p>However, that is no reason to deliberately fail the AP test. A student in this situation may not be motivated to do additional preparation for the AP test, but taking it and doing as well as can be done given minimal or no special preparation is a good way to find out where s/he stands with respect to that course material.</p>
<p>Also, some course placement can be useful, even if credit units are not given. For example, being able to skip introductory economics may open up space for additional free electives in one’s four year schedule.</p>
<p>Correct.
At our student’s school there is no “credit” for AP courses at all–even with 5s The tests are used for placement and students still need to take the full academic load.
And at some schools the “lite” APs like psych and environmental studes don’t even do that…only the “hard” APs like Calc BC , Physics C etc account for anything.</p>
<p>There is A LOT of $$ in the AP business…and “ranking” for highschools that have lots of students taking the APs…even if they only sign in and as I said, sleep. The highschool promotes the % of studnets taking AP courses and need to drill deeper for the real story</p>
<p>For example, suppose a student goes to a college where s/he must take four courses per semester over eight semesters, or 32 courses total, regardless of AP scores. But supposed the college gives placement out of two semesters of freshman calculus which the student needs for his/her major for a score of 5 on AP calculus BC. This means that the student effectively gets to take two additional free electives instead of two semesters of freshman calculus. Two additional free electives can be used to take two additional advanced courses in math or his/her major, or two additional courses in an unrelated area which s/he wants to explore.</p>
<p>Nah. She already knew where she stood with the course material, namely, that she’d not learned much from the class. She didn’t need to have the official number grade from the college board to tell her that. </p>
<p>On the bright side, so many students at D1’s high school did (uncharacteristically) badly on one of the badly-taught AP classes that the teacher is no longer at the school. I suppose that this was a good way for the school to find out where the teacher stood with respect to that course material. ;)</p>
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<p>True for courses where you feel you’ve learned the material. In this case, she knew that she’d retake the course at a college level, regardless of what she got on the AP test. So the test was utterly useless. She wouldn’t be placing out of the class, she wouldn’t be gaining any credits.</p>
<p>AP/IB scores aren’t necessarily the only ways to place out of lower-level courses in many subjects…including math. Several colleges…including Harvard offer departmental placement exams in math, foreign languages, expository writing, and many other subjects. </p>
<p>If you did well enough on those exams, you were allowed to take the next course in the sequence…regardless of whether you did AP/IB or not. </p>
<p>Another way to do so is to arrange for a meeting or few before the start of the semester with a professor of an intermediate/advanced course where he/she will assess your knowledge of prerequisite material. If you passed muster with him/her…you were in and effectively placed out of the intro/intermediate courses. </p>
<p>Many college students…including yours truly had much success using these two alternative means to place out of lower-level courses.</p>
<p>I don’t see the rush for a college freshman to place out of lower level courses. There is enough adjustment that I don’t think it’s always wise to go for the super-de-duper hard classes right off the bat. There’s a sort of “prestige” here on CC about being sooooo advanced that one just cannot bear the horror of being in “regular” college classes at an elite school because we’re all So Very Advanced, and it’s a bit much at times. Relax, you’ve made it, enjoy it.</p>
<p>Yes I agree with pizzagirl. If financial situation allows, don’t have your kid rush through college, even if they do have AP credits. I saw people who had bad experience when they skip calculus. These kids are top students in high school. When they don’t do well, they feel badly, some can’t handle and that may have disastrous effect in their college life. Being a physics prof, I know that most students who pass AP physics with a 5 should NOT skip the first year college physics, especially if they are in a high rank college.</p>
<p>Well, AP physics B is probably not much more than a better than typical high school physics course, and AP physics C is not always accepted by colleges either.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I used a 5 on AP calculus BC to skip freshman calculus and did fine in more advanced math in college. I did not graduate early, but effectively gained schedule space for extra free electives.</p>
<p>I would recommend that a student considering skipping an introductory course (that is an important prerequisite to other courses that s/he will take) with AP, IB, or A-level credit to try the old final exams for the course that s/he is considering skipping.</p>
<p>If the course to be skipped is only a peripheral or breadth requirement for which the student will not be taking more advanced courses in, take the credit and enjoy an extra free elective in its place.</p>
<p>The way I see it, a student in college is spending time and tuition to learn something new. Unnecessarily repeating stuff already known from high school is a waste of time and tuition – would you rather repeat (for example) freshman calculus, or take an interesting free elective course you saw in the course catalog that you would otherwise not be able to fit into your schedule?</p>
B and C are not as different as most people think, but both are far easier than corresponding college courses. Of course, that is not necessarily a bad thing if it can help a student avoid an unnecessarily difficult course.</p>
<p>However, most students who need to take a calculus-based physics course that AP physics C theoretically* can substitute for need it as an important prerequisite as a physics or engineering major. Obviously, non-calculus-based AP physics B cannot be used for this purpose.</p>
<p>*Not necessarily in reality, especially the electromagnetism part.</p>
<p>I can tell you that not a single student that took the AP Physics C test this year at my school knew Greene’s theorem, which is needed to evaluate the surface integrals in the E&M section.</p>
;)</p>