<p>Well, let's say you are "fairly" interested in something and have a 4.2 GPA but want to raise it even further. Let's say the class is something like Chemistry Honors (The highest level Chem offered at your school) and there is only 1 teacher who teaches it and people say that he is incompetent. Let be elaborate "incompetent" a bit: he doesn't teach that much in class because he rambles about irrelevant topics and his labs aren't really geared toward gaining something significant in Chem. Since he doesn't explain how to do the labs, they are fairly hard to do and write up; they don't seem to have purpose. He gives out tests and quizzes often and periodically that relate to everything he SHOULD have taught and that his students SHOULD know. </p>
<p>Given everything said above, would YOU take his class just for the GPA boost (on a 5.0 scale), for the chem knowledge that you'd probably "self-studied", and mabye for the experience of survivng the class taught by such an "horrible" teacher. </p>
<p>Is taking the class really worth it if you have already stacked upon yourself with 5 or so APs? If you are aiming for schools such as Stanford, UCB, and other well-known schools and are planning on applying to a Science, Pre-med, or engineering major would not taking chemistry honors make a difference in how the adcoms view you? Would taking this class suck up too much time that you could have used studying for your APs, SATs Is and IIs?</p>
<p>Yes everyone, I'm in the situation of choosing whether or not I should take this class when almost everyone I've talked to claims that the teacher is "terrible" and that they wouldn't reccomend taking the class. Should I suck it up and take it? What would you do??</p>
<p>ADDED: No I haven't taken any chemistry at all. I've taken AP Physics (5), Biology, and I will be taking APES and AP BIO next year.</p>
<p>That's tough then.
Going into college without a basic overview of chemistry could be really difficult. Especially with some science/engineering majors.</p>
<p>Any chance you could take a basic chem course at a local cc? Or self-studying could suffice. Most colleges look for chem anyway.</p>
<p>Well, I don't know if the teachers at my CC are better the same or worse.. and I don't get the GPA boost either. </p>
<p>Do colleges absolutely look for Chemistry? Do you think I should take it Junior or Senior year? What if I can't make it with studying all of these courses?</p>
<p>How many hours per day do you think I would need to dedicate to selfstudy chapters so I don't fail his tests and quizzes? Do you think it is possible to do so? I've heard of people taking like 6+ APs so I dunno. </p>
<p>The main difference between self-studying and taking the class is the teacher correct? Would I be okay if I just asked the teacher questions?</p>
<p>i'm in a similiar situation. My AP us history teacher ( that i will have next year), is absolutely horrible. He doesn't really teach, all he cares about is getting his next paycheck. To illustrate how horrible he his, i'll post the APUSH scores stats:</p>
<p>many people don't why he still works at my school. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, despite how incompetent he his, i will still be taking the Course, for three reasons:</p>
<p>1) It's 1 out of the 2 AP's juniors can take ( and i want to have the most rig. courseload offered at my school (for HYP).</p>
<p>2) I want to remain valedictorian ( so i need that weighted class)</p>
<p>3) I want to prove that i can still get a 5 on the exam, despite the fact that he is a horrible teacher ( so i'll self study a lot of the info.)</p>
<p>in conclusion, i encourage you to take the class. It will help your gpa and inevitably your class rank. Also, it will show that you took the most rigorous courseload available at your school. And, just because he his a horrible teacher, doesn't mean you can't learn stuff on your own. good luck in the upcoming school year :)</p>
<p>Maybe that works with history, but Chemistry is incredibly hard to learn on your own, especially if you don't love it the way some people do (I reallllly like Chem). Especially when you get to more advanced chemistry, ie Mols, Balancing equations and the like. </p>
<p>I would highly suggest either finding some sort of online course or taking it at a city college. You need to have some sort of competent teacher to be able to go to with your questions.</p>
<p>huh, okay, well my school must have horrible teachers, my math class, physics, and french were all basicaly self studied this year... like in physics, it was, walk in talk,get hanhed a packet you don't know how to do, talk for the whole class, get the answers to teh packet, then laterbe etsted on everything... in my math class, everyone brings there books from home so you can look at the examples and figure it out yourself... and french, we watched finsing nemo, pirates 1 and 2, the sand lot, and many other movies... I think If you are interested in it then take the class! take it at a CC, or online if you want!</p>
<p>^ wow, in my french class we watched roots, the temptations, the ice cream suit, and rugrats go to paris(Lol).......horrilbe teacher, didn't know a lick of french.</p>
<p>I'd take the class, sleep or play on my calc, mess around in the lab and self study for tests and get out with an A and val status. I really don't care much about my teachers. Basically mess around in class and catchup at home.</p>
<p>Our school is huge, so unless the class is super-specialized (ie Calc 3 or Spanish 6 or something to that extent) you never know who you're going to get. However, you do know for some classes who you might get. This year I signed up for AP World with the posssibility of getting either an amazing supercool teacher or a really bad, really hard teacher. I've been told the good teacher is teaching 60% of the classes, and the bad one is teaching the rest, so I guess the odds are in my favor. But I'm still super worried! I find out who I have in 24 hours!</p>
<p>Okay, so it wouldn't really matter if I took Chem Senior year right? I might think of doing that to even the rigor. Also, does Chem overlap much with Bio/APES? Would it be of any benefit to study them all concurrently?</p>
<p>Take the class. If you have a good textbook, and actually read through it, you will learn chemistry regardless of who your teacher is. Think of textbooks as places where a few really good teachers come together and write up their lecture notes in a nicely organized format. Textbooks are complete, authoritative, and usually well-presented -- and if you take a class, you'll be giving yourself motivation to read them. (As opposed to the kind of procrastination you might suffer through if you were to skip the class and self-study the material completely on your own.)</p>
<p>I think I've learned more in my "terribly taught" classes than in my well-taught classes -- just because the teachers were so obviously horrible that I knew I had to learn all the material from the textbooks. I got double 5's in my AP Government class despite having four different teachers during the school year, three of whom knew next to nothing about government. Even now, if you ask me about something I learned in gov class, I'd probably remember it, but if you asked me about something I learned in history (where I actually had decent teachers, and slacked off on the textbook-reading), I probably wouldn't. (I had similarly bad teachers -- and awesome textbooks -- for AP Chem and AP Bio, both of which I got 5's on. My AP Bio teacher never did labs, and would literally spend all of class reading from the Cliffs Notes.)</p>