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<p>AP calculus BC is supposed to be equivalent to a two semester long college calculus course, typically 4 credit hour units per semester. The usual expected workload per credit hour unit is 3 hours per week (including both in-class and out-of-class time).</p>
<p>Going by that, a high school senior in AP calculus BC (assuming a one year course starting from precalculus, not an “AP lite” version that assumes previous completion of AP calculus AB) should theoretically be spending about 12 hours per week on that course. If the same student is taking several other AP courses that are not “AP lites” or those equivalent to a semester college course but spread over a year, then that multiplies to a rather large workload (e.g. four non-“lite” AP courses = 48 hours per week; six non-“lite” AP courses = 72 hours per week).</p>
<p>This may be a slight overestimate, since actual college student workloads are somewhat less than 3 hours per credit hour unit per week, due to declines over the decades. Also, students in AP courses in high school are likely to be among the better students compared to typical college freshmen or college-bound high school seniors, so they may be able to work somewhat less to learn the material and do the assignments. But the workload is still pretty high for a high school senior taking six non-“lite” AP courses even accounting for that.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is why so many AP courses are “AP lite”, in that high schools take a year to cover what would be a semester-long course in college, or are not very difficult to begin with (e.g. human geography probably counts for both aspects). Making them truly college level in rigor by teaching the “AP lite” courses as semester-long courses instead of year-long courses would likely increase the workload of high school students taking more than two or three of them to unsustainable levels.</p>