Could be a good idea for some students. The issue is finding a HS where they can take an AP test.
There are other access issues too. Not sure if CB is considering proctored and digital home based AP tests, but that would solve some access problems.
AP choice has to make sense in terms of 1) academic preparation 2) academic goals 3) progression.
For instance, take APES. How do you evaluate that choice? Intrinsically, along with AP Human Geography and Ap Stats, it’s a class that will help you most understand the world around you and often directly analyzes recent events&situations. It’s also among the easiest APs.
So, all students who take APES show curiosity and willingness to learn about the world around them. In addition, it ties easily to ECs for students who are especially interested in the environment, climate change, etc.
However it won’t be evaluated the same in these 3 situations, all fairly common at very selective universities:
AP robots are kids who stockpile APs in a way that doesn’t make sense (for whom quantity>>progression, sometimes to the point they take an AP rather than a core class) and self study because they think it’ll “impress” adcoms.
AP robots are students unfairly judged by internet commentators who have no idea about their personality, context, other interests, extracurricular efforts or any of the like. The AP police are just triggered by the words “will studying outside of the classroom impress AO’s”. Oh yeah with the caveat that studying for PROMYS academy, SUMaC or IMO are considered “extra curriculars” and not academic. Right.
I don’t judge people I don’t know based on the fact that they read a variety of different novels and nonfiction. A lot of independent reading should and does impress adcoms. Literally what is supposed to go in the box called “love of learning”. Similarly, I don’t second guess athletes who play golf, football and baseball. No invisible hand of “progression” or “goals” that I have to divine. How many pro athletes do we see who played a different sport in high school or even college? From the broadest bases rise the tallest trees. If they want to try all of those sports? Great. Since when isn’t learning a good unto itself? Is that how cynical we’ve become?
In suburban USA, easly a majority of kids spend a lot of time doing things they think will “impress” your quotes adcoms. That’s because one of their life goals at that stage in life is to “impress” adcoms and get into the best college they can. Whether they have a passion for or are good at their activities is related but not the same thing. And is it really in life? Mark Cuban says following your “passion” is “the dumbest thing you can do in life”. He proposes to follow your “effort”. Cuban is no authority, but any expert in happiness will tell you that happiness is loving what you have and not having what you love. I’ve heard about 3 talks by eminent professors on this exact topic. That’s the constant. That goes for jobs too.
For me, I’d much rather have lunch with a high school student who is intellectually curious, well educated across many disciplines and has at least a working knowledge of a wide range of subjects than a single-horse passion project who is only interested in how early 20th century art from Austria presaged the atrocities of WWII but who tells me “STEM” isn’t my thing. Isn’t that why so many colleges REQUIRE a “liberal arts” education where students have to take courses across multiple disciplines? Before college, everything you do has to be defensible? All of a sudden, in college, you are allowed to be intellectually curious without some cynical adcom questioning your motives? What?
I don’t know why so many here second guess kids, particularly smart kids who face daunting odds, a system where there are no clear paths to what many students consider success, colleges that deliberately obscure admissions criteria and “adcoms” who would have them second guess their own curiosity. My guess is that when they picture those smart and curious kids, they don’t see themselves. Does a future biology major have any business taking macroeconomics? YES. Does a future premed have any business taking Studio Art? YES. That’s literally what makes for an educated cultured society. And when, if not in your youth, should these kids be spreading their wings and exploring? We judge a kid taking environmental science as frivolous if at age 16, they didn’t know they wanted to major in post-war US history? Why stomp on this kid’s initiative to learn? And if it also impresses the adcoms? It does impress some. Just apparently not many on this site.
I’m not sure if you’re a kid or a parent, but you sound very belligerent.
The point is that it doesn’t impress college adcoms. Trying to guess what will impress adcoms students don’t know at colleges that are quite different is pointless.
Can you read the 3 cases -what do you make of them? Why are they different?
I’m pretty sure you’re a parent, and we simply disagree.
The point you’re making is that studing with greater breadth and greater rigor doesn’t impress college adcoms. That’s your belief system. We disagree on this, and I can do this without starting in with ad hominem attacks like “belligerent”. But if we’re going that way, I don’t think this is the place to “question someone’s ability to read”. That degree of patronizing attitude must make you a popular guy. Is manners an EC or is it standard curriculum?
When you say, “it won’t be evaluated the same”. The answer is, no two students are evaluated “the same”. Three cases or three thousand cases. Whether some achievement moves the needle for anyone for anything in different contexts is the point. But the same patronizing approach that questions my ability to read allows you to know everything about a kid that wants to study a subject. That’s where you and the AP police believe academic vigor and curiosity are meaningless. My opinion is that is sad.
I’m not questioning your ability to read, I’m asking you to read like an adcom. I’m presenting 3 common cases - how do you analyze each of them, strictly for that one AP class.
BTW, you seem to think I’m criticizing the 3 applicants and I’m not.
I am also not making the point that studying in greater depth and over a breadth of subjects is pointless.
Reminder that CC is not the place for debate. Make your point and rebuttal once and move on or take it to PM.
Further posts will be deleted.
This article from the NYT raises a relevant point. Kids develop and learn at different speeds. Telling a kid that self-studying advanced material including AP material is time wasted that is better spent doing anything or nothing hurts kids on both ends of the spectrum - those kids who want to start early on curriculum that they will find challenging (like brushing up on their algebra, learning basic calculus) before they have to take a difficult AP class in school. It also hurts accelerated students by telling them that their intellect can only be measured through the arbitrary lens of of the high school in their particular neighborhood, so acceleration beyond this is a waste of time.
Let’s be clear - the messaging among many here here is not only that taking additional AP’s, either self-study or in school, is not impressive for adcoms. It is also clearly that doing so is a waste of time and even detrimental as it creates boring, inhuman academic robots.
Encouraging self-study of AP’s, especially those not offered in a student’s school, keeps the most academically accelerated kids in class. Decades of research shows that the presence of high-achieving students is one of the greatest benefits for students who are lower achieving. Without this, a greater number of accelerated students will take the path of blowing through available courses - whatever they are - at their high school and focus their efforts on activities outside of school - apparently the only legitimate achievements according to the AP police.
And what if your high school offers AP Environmental Science, Chem and Calculus but not European history. And your family is from France, and you want to major in European History? I guess you can read about European History, but if you want to follow the AP curriculum and prove your efforts with a test… well then… 1) that AP better not be "obviously one of those that is so easy to self-study. 2) you’d better be ready to prove your humanity to an adcom whose initial impression is that you’re a boring, academic drone and 3) Maybe it’d just be better to read books on the subject on your own and hope that the adcom’s take your word for it. I mean you’re probably better at putting together a curriculum than the teachers who construct the AP curriculum right?
Yes, finding a HS to administer an AP exam is a further hurdle. As homeschooled students in my area attest, each school district has its own policy, and some of this can come down to the largesse of an individual AP coordinator. It can be a lot of phone calls and some driving.
Knowing that there are these logistical hurdles in addition to the difficulty of learning the coursework, wouldn’t that make the rural kid’s achievements in a way more impressive and not less? It’s about how a kid has overcome adversity isn’t it? I recall seeing an essay prompt that sounds a lot like that.
If the point is that self-studying AP’s is impracticable, I would think that even the home-schooled student story in this thread shows it is possible. In many areas DE is a similar tangle of college rules, high school restrictions and rules about grades, credits and graduation requirements. Are we to abandon both?
Undergrads don’t major in European history (they major in history, and maybe concentrate in a region), but even if they did, a student like this would be much better off reading about European history independently and waiting to take actual courses in college, which would provide a far better experience than self-studying for an AP. The AP history curricula don’t come close to the college classes they replace, and self-studying that curricula to take a test … that doesn’t make sense to me as a course of action for someone actually interested in the subject. For a student who isn’t interested in history and just wants to exempt themselves from a college gen ed requirement – in that case, maybe.
Many people take an AP and then get to college and take an overlapping introductory class. They were interested in the subject in high school. They were still interestd in College, but wanted to make sure they were on the right college track as far as preparation for upper level classes. And certainly undergrads can specialize within their field. Here - history. If this is more acceptable “and you want to major in history with an emphasis on european history”? I’ve met multiple high school students over the past year alone whose interest in literature or history is specific - in fact more specific - than simply “european”.
So a student who want to be a math major shouldn’t take Calc BC so they can learn math “the right way” in college? Okay. That’s an interesting opinion. At least for BC Calc, the high schools appear to be doing a much better job teaching the BC calc curriculm than a lot of colleges do… based on the percentage of high school students getting a “5” on the exam which is normalized to college students taking calculus.
So a student should take AP’s in classes other than the one they are interested in to get out of requirements? Multiple people here have expressed that. But isn’t that exactly how people here get the “boring academic drone” tag - because they want to study subjects that aren’t their “life long passion”? That makes them “professional students?” Which way is it? Are there myriad legitimate reasons that any particular kid would want to take one or many AP’s or are there not? One of the many ironies of the AP police.
I wasn’t talking about taking the classes. I was talking about self-studying (responding to your comment about the same). I honestly think that that self-studying for an AP in a subject you’re passionate about is usually not the way to go, because you’ll miss out on so much by not taking a class.
I usually wouldn’t recommend self-studying Calc BC, either, but in that case, if a student is in a school that doesn’t offer it and is eager to pursue math and possibly explore it in college, and there are no DE equivalents … then maybe it makes sense. But I don’t know math like I know history. I do know that self-studying AP history courses would not be analagous to self-studying AP math, because sequencing to get ahead in history is not as important as it is in math.
Self-studying vs. class has a lot of variables including quality and experience of teacher and quality of alternative teaching resources. It also has a lot to do with the education of your parents and other resources available (e.g. helpful teachers in your school) who can help you through rough spots.
Some of the AP classes at Andover (a pretty good private school) are based on or mirrored on Khan academy. The lecture portion, syllabus, notes, problem sets and questions for many AP level classes are available on MIT open courseware.
My guess is that you might be able to do a better job than the college board at helping your kid study history. Some parents can do the same for their kids in math or science or literature. For the other kids out there, the AP curriculum just might not be a good place to start for the independently curious.
And none of these factors (parental knowledge and expertise, school involvement in independent study, facility with remote learning, etc) are known to commentators here who wholesale object to anyones’ self studying any AP.
Yeah my two cents is really very few topics lend themselves to proper study through the AP format. I do think Math through BC (aka Calc II in the standard sequence) is one possible exception, and possibly modern languages and maybe intro CS. And even in all those cases, I don’t think it is ideal, but at least potentially useful such that you could reasonably skip ahead to the next level in college without really having missed much.
But for most subjects, including natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, the AP format really is not at all what I would consider appropriate for the topic.
So on the one hand, I appreciate that sometimes kids still in HS may want to continue to explore various areas beyond what their HS offers. But I also think with the possible exceptions above, they should if at all possible be doing that through a format appropriate for the topic, not an AP format.
Just to clarify, then your feeling is no one should take any AP’s other than math, languages and CS? Because the courses are so inappropriate?
For your average 16 year old, it’s not okay to start with the AP stuff and go from there? You must have a lot of expertise in a lot of subjects to know that the architects of AP’s did such a bad job in such a broad swathe!
For our information, what is the “appropriate format”? Is there any accountability for that format, or do kids just write on their app that they’re really interested in Charlemagne, and they’ve read 3 books on the topic?
I am definitely better than the College Board at helping my kids study history. But I still want them to study with a teacher (or their own professor – not Professor Mom) first and foremost, and with their fellow students. Independent study, in most cases, is for advanced work – not intro, foundational work.
Again, I’m not challenging you on whether students should take AP courses. I’m challenging your point about self-study.
The challenge is that teachers vary widely in talent and experience and I could easily imagine a situation where you might not be happy with putative “other teacher” who might not do as well as you at teaching.
Students also differ vastly in the way they learn. Some learn well didactically with opportunities to discuss. Others study better in silence through visual learning of notes and textbooks. I don’t challenge anyone who I don’t know as to what kind of learning and with whom they will do best, and to some limited degree the AP exam (not to start an OT debate now about how good the AP test makers are at doing their jobs) already measures learning.
Who are we to judge others’ preferred way of learning? Is someone who self-studies for the SAT fake while someone who goes to Princeton review classes getting “the real deal” from an actual teacher?
I think we go off the rails when we pre-judge other students, their preferences, their study habits, their context and their resources and simply say “self-study AP’s are bad!”
There is a lot of opinion here, but not everyone would see AP classes as basic, foundational work. For the high school students who aren’t here to challenge or to be challenged but rather to gain some kind of guidance, AP’s probably seem anything but basic.
I of course did not say anything of the kind.
To me, as I said before above, obviously all this is contextual, and it depends on your interests, aptitudes, and choices available.
So, for example, I personally do not think the AP format is great for history or literature classes. However, if in your high school the only advanced classes in history or literature are AP classes, then of course you might reasonably take those classes.
Another obvious context is if college is going to be expensive for you and additional APs can reduce that cost, that could be a good reason to do them even if that is not ideal from an educational perspective. And so on.
But in that particular post, I was discussing the self study question, and specifically in the context of a kid still in HS who want to continue to explore various areas beyond what their HS offers (so not because they were trying to reduce college costs, for example). And as I said quite explicitly, I think THAT particular goal, meaning exploring beyond what their HS offers, is what they should do in a format actually appropriate for history or literature or so on if at all possible.
I sense for you this is more a rhetorical/argumentative question than an actual invitation to a civil discussion.
But for the record, I think it obviously depends on the topic. But usually in something like the aforementioned history or literature, the best format is to read something, sometimes as a group, then discuss it as a group, then write something at length, and then maybe discuss what you each wrote as a group. I think that sort of format will best help you gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the issues in the relevant field, and help you develop the skills that will help you participate in higher level courses in that field.
Of course there is no big mystery about all that, as higher level college courses in history, literature, and so on typically look just like that, as in fact do grad program courses. And my feeling is there is no reason not to start with an age-appropriate version of that as early as possible, certainly including college-bound HS kids.
But that format doesn’t work if your goal is preparing the students to do well on something like an AP test. And the reason AP tests are like that is not because some group of college professors decided that was the ideal format for every sort of field. They are like that because it is possible to administer thousands of standardized tests like that at one time and produce comparable scores.
Indeed, I am not sure if everyone is always aware at how loose the College Board is when it comes to the content of AP classes. They basically only make sure the teacher understands the scope and format of the exam, and reflects the exam topics in a syllabus, but otherwise they are pretty much hands off on what actually happens in the class:
So the only essential characteristic of an AP class is it seek to prepare the students to take the AP exam for that subject, and then self-study programs are typically also similarly focused only on that one task. Any other sort of pedagogical goals you might reasonably have for a course in history, literature, natural science, social science, or so on is extraneous to the AP format.
Of course none of this is exactly revelatory, and educators in many fields, along with people who study education itself, have been criticizing “teaching to the test” for many years. And of course some colleges will not even give credit for APs, and may only allow you to use them for placement in limited circumstances, for the same basic reason–they do not actually see most AP classes as an appropriate substitute for their own actual classes.
But again, you can’t then just leap to the simplistic conclusion no HS kid should take APs in such fields. Because in many high schools, they are still going to be the best classes available to them, and sometimes they will also be a critical way to reduce college costs.
But if your goal is to actually take a good class in a subject, including one that will do the most to prepare you for more advanced colleges classes in the same subject, and so on, again it is not exactly a new thought that the AP format is not really appropriate for many sorts of topics.
Since self study is so maligned…
Self study a big part of what is embraced by high schools to provide exactly the “foundational” knowledge that kids get in later coursework. In our school district, every student who wanted to take honors algebra was required to take IXL sessions and verified Khan academy lectures and tests over the summer on pre-algebra and also introductory algebra concepts including those that would be covered again in the class. No socratic group thinks, no discussion. I guess kids could have been discussing the problems on their beach towels in Southampton or the Cape, but I kind of doubt it. Just about 60 hours of self-study that was checked, and graded.
Same goes for summer readings for history and literature. Essays are due in the first week of school. No discussions. No book clubs.
So schools can rely on self-study to prepare kids for success in upcoming classes, but when colleges look at students, they don’t see AP self-study as a reflection of their likelihood of success as an undergraduate taking classes in those subjects? AP’s are worse than Khan or IXL? Or colleges don’t care how likely you are to succeed as an undergrad, so that’s why none of this matters a whit as far as admissions?
Especially at the introductory level, schools already fully embrace self-study to varying degrees. In many smaller school districts, AP “classes” for more difficult or esoteric fields can be a small number of students on computers with a periodic “check in” by a teacher. But hey, those kids are beyond reproach, and the kid in the next district who has “self study” on his transcript is a boring, academic drone. In many areas, whether something is called a “self study” or appears as a school “AP” depends more on teacher staffing, budget and the whim of the AP coordinator than on how the material is being presented.
People talk about Calculus BC as a self-study, and frequent commentators on CC even have kids who self-studied BC calc, but “only for the limited purpose of following their passion for math”. But wait, many would argue that Calc BC might be among the worst classes to self-study and a completely inadequate preparation for college math beyond the most basic level because of the absence of any training in proofs. BC is, in a way, the ultimate bait and switch. You think you’re a math genius having taken the toughest “college-level” class in the fastest track in your high school, and you realize the second tier (from the bottom) math class in college is way too hard because you don’t know a thing about abstract math.
COVID-19 taught us a lot about self-study and remote study. The most advanced kids did the best. In fact, a cadre of those advanced kids accelerated their learning during COVID-19 having been freed from the inefficiencies of the physical school day. It’s not only that the less-advantaged kids slowed way down. Some of the more-advantaged kids sped up.
What if one of the things you are supposed to be learning is how to discuss the relevant sorts of things in groups?
This of course is a critical skill in many professions. Colleagues and clients and so on will have group meetings where they discuss important topics, and so being good at that sort of thing is an expected virtue of many professionals.
By nature it can only measure one type of learning, the type that can be evidenced in a short timed exam. Every other sort of thing people reasonably hope HS and college kids will be learning in their classes that cannot be tested in that way is therefore necessarily de-emphasized, and often entirely excluded, from any sort of program whose only goal is to optimize performance on that sort of test.
Of course I don’t want to suggest every single person has to be in a profession like that, or take the relevant classes. But if you are interested in the sorts of higher classes, professions, and so on that certain introductory classes lead to, or as a college if you want to make sure all your students in particular have at least some basic learning along those lines, then AP classes will often not be suitable for such goals.
I do not think it is helpful to turn this into an ego and insults sort of game.
A person who is interested in, say, a reading, discussing, and writing profession is going to need to develop their reading, discussing, and writing skills. And that really requires certain sorts of classes. And in fact in a lot more professions, strong reading, discussing, and writing may not be considered a primary skill set, but it can be a very important secondary skill set, particularly if you are interested advancing very far in the profession.
But of course if a given individual absolutely hates all that, that is not inherently wrong, but it means they will not likely do well in such a profession, nor in college classes with that sort of skill development being one of the primary goals.
And in some cases, it is possible self-studying APs will help some such kids dodge some college classes they wouldn’t like and do well in, and get straight to the sorts of classes they do want to take. Which is fine.
But then that person is choosing not to develop themselves in those ways. And they have a right to make that choice, but I don’t think that then means we should fail to observe what they are doing.
So again, I agree it is all contextual. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend all AP programs, including self-study programs, are really equally good substitutes for actual college classes in that topic. And that is not a matter of insulting someone’s “preferences”, but it is important for kids to know that if those are in fact their preferences, that will likely have future consequences.
I think that is unfortunate even as applied to math learning, and indeed I think a lot of people who have studied math education have come to understand why that model is really not optimal for math education. Nonetheless as noted above, I understand that sort of learning through Calc II (aka BC) may be sufficient preparation for further studies in math.
Like, never at all? I can understand giving summer reading assignments so people are ready to discuss something right away, but if you are saying these classes never discuss anything the kids are assigned to read, I would view that as a really deficient way of teaching those subjects.
I mean, some colleges don’t see ANY AP classes, live or self-study, as sufficient substitutes for their own classes such that they grant no AP credit. And then even for placement purposes they may only allow limited cases.
And yes, obviously if, say, they like to have a lot of discussions in their history and literature and so on classes, how could HS classes or self-study programs without that component be good preparation?
I’m really not sure how you can “fully” embrace something to “varying” degrees.
Obviously out of class work is a component of many college courses. And in a few courses, they may not really care if you come to lectures or sections as long as you learn the required material and can pass the exams.
But in other courses, discussions, multi-step research papers, and so on are part of, or indeed all of, the graded requirements. There still may be reading assignments, but they actually might not be all that long.
So yes, self-study is something that is involved in college courses to varying degrees, but for many sorts of colleges courses it is only one of many components, and not necessarily one of the bigger ones.
Like I said, I don’t think this mode of thinking is helping you. You seem to have been insulted by something someone here once said. I can’t answer for that person, and I don’t think you should particularly care either if you don’t think they were saying something true. You definitely do not need to turn every conversation into another attempt to prove them wrong, you can just let it go.
I mean, I think after Calc II, aka BC, you should next take at least MVC, aka Calc III, and then if you want to do certain higher math you should take Linear Algebra and some sort of introductory Analysis class (it can be called various things).
But saying Calc BC (aka Calc II) is not a substitute for Calc III or LA or an intro to Analysis class is just accurately describing the scope of Calc II.
And it definitely does not mean I think you should skip Calc II and go straight to Calc III or LA!
Again, it sounds like you have been ill-served by someone in your past, and I cannot answer for that person.
But yes, kids should know that a lot of college math is very, very different from what they have learned through Calc BC (aka Calc II). MVC (Calc III) and Diffy Q (a usual next math class for people going into science or engineering) are typically not too much more challenging for people who liked BC. But LA and then the Analysis track is a whole other ballgame. It just is what it is.