<p>How much harder is AP US history in comparison with normal history?</p>
<p>Junior year schedule (not 100% sure)
- AP Lang
- AP Psychology
- AP Art History
- Algebra 2
- French IV (maybe)
- Either junior History or AP US history</p>
<p>It varies from a lot harder to OH DEAR LORD harder, depending on your school.</p>
<p>Having said that, the hardest part of the class by far is the writing. And you’re doing AP English, so I think you could manage the class.</p>
<p>In my school, regular US History was a joke. The teacher taught nothing, like we just sit around and listen to the teacher ramble on about pop culture not even related to the time period. But in APUSH, the students had to write essays and do mock debates and do lots of reading each night. I still got a 5 on the APUSH exam though cause history really comes down to memorization (good textbook or Amsco = good score on AP).</p>
<p>from my experiences and what I’ve heard from other students in other schools:
in APUSH, you will generally have about 10-15 pages a night of note-taking, with up to 30 on some nights. For me this took around 6 minutes per page, but I heard up to twice as much as that. That’s pretty much your only nightly homework. Depending on the teacher, you will have a few or more outside essays (like we had two research papers on topics of our choice) and projects. Not that many, from what I’ve heard. Tests are generally difficult, and essays are a part of tests or the entire test. At my HS, this meant like 40 questions and an essay, both in 40 minutes for the average test. </p>
<p>Now I don’t know what the regular US history is like at the average school, but at my school it was considerably easier (no note-taking, not many essays, etc.). I really can’t see it being comparable to what I described above at any school. It’s a brutal class, especially when students at my HS didn’t have much time to do the work due to APlang and math and all the other classes the typical honors/AP student takes.</p>
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<p>yeah in APUSH, you better be prepared to write A LOT. but since you’ll be writing a lot of essays for AP Eng. Language it will help you’re writing ability more in APUSH. My class had probably 2 hours of homework a night in APUSH</p>
<p>Every school will be different. BUT…I’d think that the school with easier/harder “regular” history…will then have comparatively easier/harder “A/P” history.</p>
<p>But here is a case in point. My daughter, who was in all advanced options offered (except some math) since literally first grade where they moved her into 2nd grade…for SOME reason signed up for “regular” US History (because there was no “honors”, and there was some conflict, or she was worried about having too many A/Ps in one year…something like that). She lasted about 2 days and begged to get out. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that US History is undoubtedly REQUIRED to graduate. So EVERY student at your school is in this class. If you are not normally in the “regular” classrooms, I think you’ll be SHOCKED to learn what goes on. Sometimes just keeping order is the most that can be accomplished in any given day (again…DEPENDING ON THE SCHOOL OF COURSE). My daughter is in a widely diverse school with every socio-economic distinction and not every student is college bound; savvy? So…if you’re already planning all those other AP courses you must consider yourself AP material and I’m guessing it might be even harder to sit through a “normal” class than to do the extra work for the AP classes. I worry too many kids are told by their counselors that AP is tough. Of COURSE it is, on average. BUT…many kids NEED that work. I think one learns precious little these days in “normal” (non honors/A-P) classes. My D is taking 5 APs this year an her counselor warned her against it. But I once asked to pull her back from a 2-3 year advanced math program and it ended up being a HUGE mistake. Struggle/work is good. But frustration is not. That said…grade 11 is HUGE. You set your class rank and GPA for admissions (with that minor tweak at midyear as a Senior), you probably earn your first “A/P Scholar” distinction, etc. Top colleges want “rigor” in your schedule. But of course that does no good if you can’t do the work because it’s all too much. Good luck in your decision.</p>
<p>It really depends on your school. In my high school we wrote one essay for the class that the teacher basically gave all As and Bs for. We wrote practice DBQs, but maybe like 3 that were never graded. Actually, I think we just outlined our DBQs for what we wanted to say and only wrote one actual one. I went to a top public school in the country (top 100 News Week, sends plenty of kids to Ivies and more to top 25 schools) and our teacher said that we had written enough in other classes that we were well prepared. Most of my friends and I got 5s, most kids got 4s, and almost all got 3+.</p>
<p>AP US History is significantly more rigorous at my school than the regular class. Much more homework and reading is required and you are expected to know the material well enough to be able to contribute in class discussions for points. The way it works at my school is if you don’t contribute to the discussions, you will be called on eventually and docked major points if you don’t know your stuff. So reading the chapters is a must. When I took the class, our teacher even collected our homework and then called on random students to recite material from the homework from memory. If you didn’t come up with a good verbal response on the spot, you just lost half the points on that homework assignment, and homework was a big chunk of the grade. The regular class has almost no homework, little to no reading, and participation in class discussions is voluntary. Not to mention the AP course has an AP exam, something the regular class doesn’t have to worry about. That being said, AP is much more difficult at my school than the regular course, and is most likely at any other school.</p>
<p>You would do better to ask other students at your school. 
They can give you a better answer than we ever will.</p>
<p>Having said that, thirty pages of notes? Wow. We had maybe four pages per unit, and the teacher almost never took them up. Usually we only had the occasional vocab, DBQs were rare–basically no work, but tests were (according to the rest of the class) fairly difficult and always involved essays. Just trying to add in some more perspective :)</p>
<p>(The teacher was new to the subject, though, so there’s that.)</p>
<p>bump in need of more info
question
take this class or AP Art history?</p>