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<p>Taking actual college courses also gives the student a better idea of what the expectations are in college – i.e. much less handholding, and students are expected to be self-motivated. Some otherwise well prepared (in terms of knowledge of college-prep and perhaps AP level material) students struggle in their first semester due to failing to adjust to the different expectations in college compared to high school. Even when a high school AP course covers the same breadth and depth of material in the college course, the student experience in this respect differs.</p>
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<p>In actual college courses, tests are often higher stakes than in high school courses, because there are fewer of them per semester, and other things like homework are counted less or none at all. In this respect, AP tests do resemble college more than high school (exceptions would be for courses like English composition that evaluate primarily on essays or projects rather than tests).</p>
<p>In Minnesota, do these programs include getting high schools and colleges to coordinate scheduling to make it convenient for high school students to take college courses from a scheduling and commuting standpoint?</p>