<p>My d took many AP exams and did decently with 3s and 4s. It translated into 24 credits at Mizzou. At $600/credit, we deemed it worth every penny.</p>
<p>Last year at our HS, a student did not wish to take the AP test as he felt he had not been prepared well. Parents must pay for all AP tests, so he felt it was a waste of money. The school insisted that he take it. He refused. He was punished by being banned from all the senior activities at the end of the year. I thought that was very unfair. There was nothing mentioned anywhere - either verbally or written - that if you take an AP course, you must take the exam. I see they have put it in writing in the course catalog for this year, though.</p>
<p>Our h.s requires everyone who takes an AP class to take the exam. The school system pays for it. If a student takes the AP class but does not take the exam, their final grade in the class is dropped one letter grade.</p>
<p>I wrote similar check a few days ago. Our high school does not require AP student to take the appropriate AP test but I thought it’s a good idea for D to take them so she must not fall into the senioritis trap. The loom of 5-6 AP tests would do it.</p>
<p>Our high school requires kids to take the APs and parents have to pay for the tests, but they will cover the costs for anyone eligible for free or reduced lunch. They don’t let kids into the classes who they don’t think will do well, and, at least in the 9 AP classes my son took, at least three quarters of the kids get 4s and 5s.</p>
<p>Many schools require the kids to take the tests because there is a Newsweek rating of High Schools that is based solely on the # of kids who take the exams. Not how many PASS them, but how many TAKE them. A neighboring high school ALWAYS makes a big deal out of making this Newsweek list, but THEY pay for all the kids to take the exams. Our school has a MUCH higher passing rate than theirs, but it is not required to take them and parents have to pay for them. So we don’t make the list. Who cares? I’d rather have my child pass…
Oh…and a lot of kids don’t take them sr. year if they are going to a school that doesn’t give AP credit. Those students have to take a final exam in lieu of the AP exam.</p>
<p>$500? How many test is this student taking? Six…in ONE year? Wow.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>This must vary wildly from school to school. Neither of my kids’ tuition costs were higher as upperclassmen.</p>
<p>$336 here for 4 APs, at 84 bucks a pop</p>
<p>it would have been 400 something but I decided it wasn’t worth it to take Physics. I’m not exactly great at it and only 30 out of 70 kids who took it at my school ast year got a 3 or above.</p>
<p>Our public charter high school has a school scholarship fund that students can apply for at the beginning of the school year. If a student is eligible for the fund, then it pays for things throughout the year - SAT’s, AP’s, school dances, yearbooks, things like that. This seems to work well. The money comes from the school’s annual fundraising drive.</p>
<p>Our (public) school charges $100 per exam. $1200 paid so far.
Most of the schools that I am applying for will not give AP credits.</p>
<p>its sad because its prep to take a test- one test- that is the same everywhere, and a History class at yale wil be different from one at Harvard, but the AP- its History in the eyes of a small group of test makers-</p>
<p>with subjects like math and science-pretty cut and dry, but subjects like Lit, Econ, History, Art, very different indeed</p>
<p>It creates a cookie cutter education, but not necessaruly a better one</p>
<p>And it teaches too much to the test and prepapring for the test, with not as much emphasis on thinking out of the box, something sorely missing</p>
<p>My D did AP Gov at her HS, and decided to take Gov again in College, best move she ever made, she knows if she had skipped it, as she could hvae after her 5 on the test, her education in that area would have been “just enough” and no where near the college calliber she is getting- and her teacher in HS went beyond the AP curriculum- way beyond it</p>
<p>So, its all well and good to skip some college classes with AP credit, but lets not pretend its a college class in HS- the vast majority of the time its not, and that is why many schools are only accepting a few AP class credits, are insisting on the test (many classes called AP are just not an advanced class at all)…</p>
<p>For my D, she could “get out” of 4 classes, one of which was an elective, but she decided to opt out of the basic Lit class and go advanced (her college has a core), and to actually take two again- Gov and Psych- and for her, it was worth the money for the actual college class</p>
<p>Conbrio, your school is ripping you off! Our school just went UP to $54 this year! And the problem is there is no set AP curriculum. At our school these courses are very rigorous with LOTS of class discussion/participation that really excites the kids. Citygirlsmom, my d found just the opposite at her school. She took both a Eurohistory and US history class due to the AP classes she LOVED in high school and they were nowhere as fulfilling to her as the AP classes were. They were slow and non participatory. I guess it is all in the curriculum; they should have stricter guidelines. Sorry yours weren’t fulfilling.</p>
<p>Conbrio, your school is definitely ripping you off. Public schools should not be passing on administrative costs to students. You are paying around 20% more than the cost of the test. That is robbery.</p>
<p>Requiring students who take the course to take the exam is a tough call. My D had to do that, even though she had no intention of using the exam scores to place out of college classes for various reasons (for example, her intro to psych class in college was WONDERFUL … and she would have missed that had she used her AP psych score from her boring AP psych class). I hated paying for so many exams, knowing that she couldn’t/wouldn’t use some of the scores. However, I see the flip side. I sub in a public high school where kids are not always required to take the exams. What I have observed is that students in the exam-required classes seem to take the class more seriously. Many students take the exam-optional classes just to “look good” by having AP classes, knowing they’ll get a 1 point grade boost. They plan on going to schools that are not all that selective, so just having AP’s is good enough. These students often don’t take the class seriously & frankly, they hold the rest of the class back. I know that this shouldn’t happen, but it does. The teachers get pressure if they don’t give decent grades, so they cave. Last year, the AP Comp (exam-optional) teacher failed some students … you should have heard the outcry! The ones who failed deserved to fail, but too many parents & students seem to think that no AP student should be failed. I feel bad for teachers … they often can’t win. Teacher is expected to make tests/papers easy enough so that everyone does well - even those who refuse to work at the higher level that an AP course should require? That holds everyone back, IMO. The exam-required classes don’t seem to have that issue.</p>
<p>I’m another one who has never heard of upperclassmen paying more for their courses. Where does that happen? </p>
<p>I think the AP business has gotten completely out of hand, and I’d be an advocate for ending its ability to grant college credits. I’ve known a lot of kids, in many states, who have taken AP classes and none of them has found the courses to be equivalent to a freshman college class at their colleges. The great disparity between the delivery of these AP classes is really quite ridiculous, not to mention the apparent disparity of cost! Too many variables exist, in my opinion.</p>
<p>If people want their kids to have the advantage of classes which “are very rigorous with LOTS of class discussion/participation that really excites the kids”, this should be possible without adding college credit into the mix. This was certainly available back in the dark ages when I was in high school, and is the system that is used here in Ontario. I don’t think the issues of challenging high school curriculum and college credit necessarily need to be linked.</p>
<p>^^^ agree, however, at our school the classes that are not AP the quality of work is pathetic and or the expectations fromt the students. I know this is school specific, however, DD has some friends in non AP courses that have NOT done a lick of homework since 9th grade. Not much is expected from them, they benefit from the chunk of kids who do take the AP level work as we do NOT weigh honors classes at all/AP level work only gets a boost if they have 95 at the end of the course and only 1 point is given. And the school ranks its students, So techically a non AP kid can have a higher GPA and “look” better on paper till you look at their regents exam scores, SAT/ACT scores.</p>
<p>Fordiscussion spoke of “upper division” tuition. I assumed that meant graduate level courses, not just courses taken by junior or seniors. I remember having complete freedom to take graduate level courses as part of an undergrad degree 30 years ago. I wonder if there is a great deal of variety in how schools handle that? Anyone have recent experience in being charged more for grad credits taken as part of an undergrad degree?</p>
<p>Have you ever actually looked at the prompts on the AP English exams? OMG. One teacher showed it to us on Curriculum night. It was then and there that I realized that my d knew WAAAAAAY more as a HS senior than I ever had to learn! Very humbling.</p>
<p>mizzou-mom, I have. I think that curriculum, in general, has changed since we were in high school. I don’t think that that’s the point, though. In my opinion, the issue is whether kids should be earning college credits for high school classes. And, as I said, none I’ve seen have been equivalent to an actual college class. Perhaps some are, to some classes in some colleges, but that has not been the experience of kids I know.</p>
<p>CBK, I realize that there is a terrible disparity, in some schools, between ‘regular’ classes and APs, in curriculum, quality of staff, expectations, etc. This is not the way it should be. Parents and students should not be in a position of having to enroll in AP classes to insure that they get the best education in their schools. In my earlier post, I was speaking theoretically (and idealistically!).</p>
<p>Our HS apparently is odd. There are AP classes, and some choose to pay for and take the tests. In French, my Ds were discouraged from taking the test, and the teacher dissed it, of course did not teach to the test, despite the class being called AP French. Had I been on CC earlier, I’d have refused to let them take APs, as it was money wasted. The school did not, perhaps for the better? teach to the tests for the most part. At the point senior year when they took them, college admissions in hand, diligent extracurricular studying was not in the cards.</p>
<p>“Too many variables exist”</p>
<p>Indeed, but the test is not a variable, which is why colleges do not grant credit for AP courses, but only for AP exams. </p>
<p>I’m very glad that many colleges offer credit for AP exam scores, as that has the potential to lower college costs for those who do well on the exams. Those who want to do away with credit for AP must have more money than I do! College is expensive; if a kid can save a semester or year of tuition, I think it’s great to have that option available.</p>