AP v. College Prep

ucbalumnus
Sat, 16 Nov 2013 01:31:54 +0000

When I went to high school, there were only regular and honors courses (and not all subjects had honors courses). The top level honors course in some subjects was an AP course. For example, senior honors English with AP English literature, while the honors math course after honors precalculus was AP calculus BC (there was no non-honors calculus option), and the honors level 4 course in some foreign languages was an AP course.

Generally, the course rigor level tended to fall into the following order, from most to least rigorous:


Honors and AP courses (mainly students aiming for “more selective” colleges, probably about 10-15% of the students).
Regular courses mainly populated by college-bound students (typically courses more advanced than high school graduation requirements, such as precalculus math, physics, and foreign languages), and regular English courses (even though they mixed college-bound and non-college-bound students needing them for high school graduation requirements).
Regular courses (other than English) that mixed college-bound and non-college-bound students due to coincidence of college-prep courses and high school graduation requirements (courses such as world history, US history, biology, and math through geometry or maybe algebra 2).
Regular courses that were mainly non-college-bound students (some elective social studies courses, remedial math, general science, “vocational/practical” courses like drafting).


Note: “more selective” colleges were UCs in California and comparably or more selective private schools, but the UCs were nowhere near as selective then as they are now. A 3.3 HS GPA (with +1 honors course weighting) probably got in to most of the UCs back then. Much of the high school graduating class went to the local community college.