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Articles: Expert Advice
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Next Steps When Student Is Barred From Taking AP Class
CCEdit_Torrey
Editor Posts: 178 Editor
You want to take a specific AP class, but you don't meet your high school's prerequisite. Should you appeal? Find out here. https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/next-steps-when-student-is-barred-from-taking-ap-class/
Replies to: Next Steps When Student Is Barred From Taking AP Class
One other thing that @Sally_Rubenstone did not mention: most high schools prioritize staffing to ensure that courses required for graduation are covered before assigning teachers to elective classes. So if an AP class is at capacity, it's not likely that an additional section can be rolled out. So in that case, prioritization based on past grades (and class year) is fair and equitable.
Bingo! Clearly the kid did NOT take to Physics the first go around, so sticking her in the class at an AP level is not going to be a recipe for academic success (or family harmony).
A classmate of my daughter's failed the first semester of APUSH - and surprisingly to all of us, was allowed to take the second semester of APUSH - which, you guessed it, she failed as well. So summer school US history was on the docket for her. I wish the counselor had stepped in and prevented that second semester failure as well.
In the first semester of my kid’s sophomore year in HS, he had a B+ in his World History class which meant no go for APUSH the following year. My kid pestered the teacher so much about allowing him to take APUSH that he wrote me a note on his persistence. He was actually a real ass about it, insisting that he wouldn’t approve the class no matter what his arguments were. I wrote back that his mother had passed away 6 months prior and that was really affecting everything, something that my kid did not and could not express at the time. I got the teacher to finally agree to re-evaluate at the end of the year. He got an A the second half and was allowed to go onto APUSH.
FWIW, my daughter appealed and was allowed into AP Stats. She wasn’t in the advanced math track, so they said she couldn’t take AP stats until she was a senior. That wasn’t going to work with her schedule, so she appealed based on her very strong grades in all her then-classes. She got straight A’s in AP Stats, and in fact, as a junior in college, excels in stats so much that she was hired as a campus stats tutor. Sometimes appeals are justified. Not when a student can’t get a B in a regular level class though.
Show me a C-student who has time for a free non-credited online class plus time to study for an AP exam, and I'll show you someone who, if they are hoping to get into a decent college, has their priorities in the wrong place. Don't get me wrong - colleges appreciate intellectual curiosity - but the preferred way to show it is to do well in the regular classes (whether they are APs or not) and participate in ECs in a meaningful way.
"Or maybe just sign up as a non matriculated student at a local community college and take gen ed classes for actual guaranteed transferable credit."
DE's can be enriching and beneficial, but for a student having difficulty in high school level classes, DE's are a sharp, double-edged sword. Dual enrollment grades follow the student, sometimes becoming part of their college GPAs. All grades from college classes must be sent when applying for 4-year colleges AND to graduate school. Some state schools make students ineligible for financial aid if their GPA goes below a certain level. Do poorly in college classes taken while in high school and a student could find himself/herself shut out from financial aid at his/her own state's colleges before he/she has even graduated high school.
Whether a student has 2 or 4, 8 or 17 AP classes is, in large part, a factor of high school policies. Some schools don't permit freshmen or sophomores to take ANY AP classes. Others do, but limit the number. Others schools are limitless (when you hear of a kid with 15+ APs, they're probably from this kind of restriction-free school). Some schools have four or five periods a day (block schedule), some have 6, 7, 8 or 9. Some schools have more graduation requirements than others, and those classes aren't usually APs, or even weighted. Some schools don't offer APs at all because they are on the IB system or because they believe their own honors curriculum is superior. That's why the sheer number of APs on the transcript is hardly the most useful point of comparison among applicants.
I am the only one who has never heard of a kid taking a class ie Physics, then retaking it as an AP? In my world, if the student took Physics H, it's a done deal and time for another science class