<p>My Ds took loads of AP classes and took the AP tests for all of them but since they’re both engineering majors, the AP classes didn’t get them out of many courses even though they started college with sophomore standing.</p>
<p>Even if they hadn’t planned to take the tests they definitely would have taken all of the AP classes anyway since at their HS, which has a significant portion of lower-performing students, the AP classes are taught to a higher level than the non-AP classes.</p>
<p>Cressmom, it was the credits I was asking about. So if son took 12 AP’s and Chem gave him 10 credits, the other 11 only gave him 27 , right? I was having trouble with 11 AP’s yielding “only” 27 hours. It’s probably a combination of what the AP’s are and (mostly) the Engineering part of the equation (which I know very little about). </p>
<p>Oh, well. Here in the hinterlands we seem to favor community college dual credit courses instead of AP’s so D lost all of those. No credit at all.</p>
<p>cpt:</p>
<p>I understand the financial reasons for wanting to graduate early. Philosophically, however, I am opposed to rushing throiugh college. Unless a student is in a major that is highly sequential and with very specific requirements, it’s much better to take as many college courses as possible, both within and outside one’s major. One cannot have too many courses in the humanities or social sciences, however many APs one took in college. Even a course on something like American history will be taught differently by different profs whose areas of specialty are different. </p>
<p>It is not that college is the last time that one can learn something new. But college is the last time that one has the luxury of experiencing learning in a community of peers, with the full array of support from profs to turoting centers, to library access. The next time may well be when one reaches retirement. For this reason, if our finances were more restricted, I would have opted to send my kids to less expensive colleges where they would spend the full four years. But that is very much an individual family’s choice.</p>
<p>I agree with you about the lack of consistent standards, which is why I support the push for exams. At the moment, I also support our school’s policy of not requiring them because there is still such an achievement gap. One way of erasing it is to encourage students to take AP. It is not only the content that is taught at a higher level. AP classes tend to have fewer management problems, allowing students to concentrate on learning and teachers on teaching.</p>
<p>I also agree that many teachers are able to teach beyond the test; and not all are in private schools 
Unfortunately, just as many do teach to the test. The AP exam formula to me is unfortunate, as the multiple choice questions encourage rote learning rather than synthesizing knowledge. My S found the free response question of the AP-Calc exam far more interesting than the MC section. The rote learning is one reason why college profs tend to be so critical of the AP curriculum. Some students with high AP scores seem incapable of writing a decent term paper. I wish the CB modified the exam format to give more weight to sections that require less rote memorization and more critical thinking, writing, and synthesizing of information.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, yes the number is correct, they don’t give credit for all the AP’s. In the other schools they only give up to 15 credits no matter how many AP’s scoring 5 you have, the Business school takes up to 30 credit for previous work (AP’s and other college courses)</p>
<p>what marite said</p>
<p>Son took AP English and French Jr year, LOVED every minute and learned a great deal. Sr year is taking AP Gov and Calculus. The Gov is great and the Calc bad, because of the teaching, I have to assume, not the AP program.</p>
<p>His public HS offers only about 6 APs, no honors. They don’t weight, but I’m told the admissions committee will put their own weights on, so I don’t see that as a problem. Overall, the AP courses have livened up his Jr and Sr years tremendously. He keeps his intellectual juices flowing in his free time, but I’m glad at least some of his school day is also stimulating.</p>
<p>I hope he won’t rush through college, though I very much understand the financial considerations faced by many families. It can be a precious time, intellectually and socially.</p>
<p>marite, what is the problem with using AP credits in order to earn your BS/BA degree early given the cost of college for many families? While our son will not be graduating early, he will begin his graduate school studies next year, his senior year. This will provide him with the academic challenges you refer to while giving him the opportunity to complete between 1/2 to 2/3rds of his MS degree. All this while maintaining his scholarships which finance about 75% of his tuition. And I suspect that even the remaining 25% will be paid for through a TA or RA assignment.</p>
<p>I just do not see any downside to this academic plan. No, it isnt a PhD track program but, truthfully, he isnt itching to go that route.</p>
<p>Because he has decided to enroll in the Graduate School his senior year we are thankful that he decided against attending one of the LAC’s he applied to, where this option would have not been available to him.</p>
<p>Our school weighs honors and APs the same. Basically 5% more on a 100 point scale than a regular class. I think it works out to +.5 on a 4.0 scale.</p>
<p>Our hs is fairly typical weighting AP’s a +10 and honors a +5 on a 100 point scale. But oh how hard they work for that +10 points!</p>
<p>I want to go back to wht Perplexitudinous said. For about 25 years, my mother was a high school English and Philosophy teacher whose signature course was called “Value Theory”. It was extremely rigorous, was mainly about what we would now call “critical thinking”, and in those bygone days was considered a must for top students at the elite prep schools where she taught. When she stopped teaching high school, she got her PhD in Philosophy of Education and essentially converted her high school course into a college course on “Methods of Inquiry”. The course had such a dramatic effect in improving students’ grades in OTHER courses they took that it became one of the most popular courses at SUNY Buffalo and required for at-risk students.</p>
<p>I never took the course (she was my mother, after all), but many of my friends, and indeed many top students throughout her career, said it was the most important course they took in high school to prepare them for success in college.</p>
<p>My kids have taken lots of AP courses. Some have been fine, some stupid, really depending on the teacher. In every case, they took the courses because that’s where the good students were; in areas where an AP course was offered, the quality of any non-AP course went way down. None has been remotely the quality of a college course at the sort of college they are or will be attending. And none of them has been the most important class either child has taken for preparing him or her for college. In my daughter’s case, it was a set of optional one-quarter English electives (one on Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov taught by a retired teacher, one on “personal criticism” taught by a grad student/hot journal editor) and a combined Latin/History course (Roman history through original texts). In my son’s case it has been a Biochemistry elective with a retired teacher and a history elective on Contemporary Conflicts that involves a ton of writing and presenting. </p>
<p>To be fair, both got a lot out of their year-long AP Gov Pol course taught by an excellent, demanding teacher, too, and my son is really loving and getting challenged by Physics BC AP with a great teacher. My son, but not my daughter, had a pretty good APUSH class. But AP English, Chemistry, Physics AB, Calculus BC, French . . . ? Better than the alternatives available to them, but nothing to get excited about.</p>
<p>There is no question in my mind that AP displaces and squelches truly innovative courses that can be much, much more valuable. That’s why the really elite secondary schools tend to turn up their noses at AP. It may be a necessary evil, or a spur for improvement, at the majority of schools, but it is far from a hallmark of quality for academically ambitious students.</p>
<p>In our school district the students must pay for the AP tests at about $85 a pop so some choose not to take them. If they know that their future college does not give credit for the course, I can understand why they would not want to put out the money. Yet, since the course is offered as the highest level at their school, they would look remiss if they did not take the challenge of the class.
Another note- to take AP classes at our school you must have a teacher recommendation (which is based on prior years performance).</p>
<p>Ah, but those elite secondary schools somehow manage to teach the material in those AP courses. They don’t need to designate a course as AP and then dump every bit of the material that is needed to pass the corresponding AP exam into that course. The curriculum is pre-set so that over the four years of highschool, most of the kids could pass the exams and even excell in them. The number of kids in these schools taking AP exams is very high even when there are no AP courses in the subject. And the scores are right up there. Nearly all of the kids in my son’s school take the AP English grammar junior year and the Lit senior year just as a matter of course, but there are no AP courses in English. The school also has a number of those innovative courses for kids to take, though the school head told us a few years ago that they are diminishing as more kids are electing to take the standard core of courses regardless of their interest and strongpoints.<br>
When you don’t have a school that has designed their curriculum that way, the AP course does become the dumping ground for all those tedious fact that kids need to know if they want to go to a selective college. They will get those wonderful, innovative courses in college soon enough and can function in those courses far better if they are grounded in the basics. </p>
<p>JHS, will be looking at the Buffalo courses guide for that course, “Methods of Inquiry” as my son goes there. He needs a social sciences course sometime to graduate. The rest of the required academic core he APed out of, so he can focus on his field of study which is Performing Arts. He is in a BFA program, but it still requires a number of arts and sciences courses. Unlike most of his classmates, he is free to take anything he wants in the performance courses, as he has few other requirements. The APs did that for him. His math, science, English, history requirements were all complete and he was good for the Music Theory and Art History as well. He only needs a socialsciences course. At Buffalo, a 3 on the AP only counts the course as general requirements, not the specific ones. You need a 4 or 5 for the exam to get you out of a required course.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol34/vol34n3/columns/qa.html[/url]”>http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol34/vol34n3/columns/qa.html</a></p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a social science course, though.</p>
<p>Montclair NJ implemented program by the MSU “institute for the teaching of Philosophy to children” ( I think it’s called) Big suprise, teaching critical thinking skills brings up grades for kids in many subjects.
<a href=“College Of Education And Human Services - Montclair State University”>College Of Education And Human Services - Montclair State University;
<p>Anyone know where the AP class grade records are online?</p>
<p>I see nothing “wrong” with students graduating early from college. As I wrote, it works well for families whose finances are tight,.<br>
But I would rather my kids spend four years taking not just the minimum number of courses needed to graduate early but as many electives both in and outside their majors as they can. My S could do a 4 years AB/AM degree. In fact, he will begin to take graduate level classes perhaps this coming semester, but definitely next year, when he will be a junior. This is possible since he is at a university, and his taking graduate level classes while still an undergraduate was the primary reason for his attending a university rather than a LAC. However, we have all agreed that he should spend four years earning his B.A., taking more courses than he need to fulfill the requirements for his major and taking electives. So he will be as challenged as a student who does a four year A.B/AM in his major, but he will be able to also take courses in related fields and some that are totally outside his field. To me, that is the major advantage of not rushing through college.
He and we are not alone in this view. A majority or near majority of students at HYPSM have enough AP credits to graduate early but choose not to do so.</p>
<p>our school requires families to pay the $95 for the exam. Most Juniors do pay and take the exams, but skip it if they feel they might not earn a passing score. Also, about a dozen of our top seniors last year did not take the AP Govt exam bcos thier chosen colleges (highly selective schools) did not provide credit for Govt, so it wasn’t worth the $ nor 3-4 hours of time.</p>
<p>cpt:</p>
<p>Most high schools need the AP designation. The schools that can afford to not so designate their most challenging classes are already well known to adcoms at the most prestigious colleges. But Podunk High needs some way of signalling that its applicants have taken classes that are as challenging as those offered at, say, Andover (prep) or Scarsdale (well-known public). Because the AP curricula are set, and the AP exams are standardized, adcoms can feel sure that a 5 on an AP earned at Podunk High is the same as a 5 earned at Andover. The same cannot be said of community colleges. This is why a lot of colleges do not give credit for classes taken at community colleges, whereas they do give credit for APs.</p>
<p>I agree, Marite. The AP designation coupled with a good track record on exam results can enhance a highschool greatly. A piece of advice I would and have given those who are in Podunk who have a top student who wants a stab at the selective schools outside of the area, is to take some courses at a known college or precollege program with grades. It gives the adcoms at such schools a better frame of reference in feeling that such a kid is well versed in the calibre of academics that they expect. My observation has been that top schools love to take a chance on kids from truly challenged and disadvantaged environments, but they are not as interested in that middle class kid who is in an average environment with an adequate but not great highschool. Such kids need to show that they have the incentive to “step beyond” These kids cannot rely on their AP courses alone to showcase their academic prowress if the school is not getting the results needed on the APs. Many APs are not taken until senior year, and the test isn’t even taken by the time the decisions are due from the kids. That’s where track record of the school comes into play.</p>
<p>I must be getting gypped at my school – we only get +5 on a 100 point scale. </p>
<p>I didn’t read all the comments, but I didn’t see these points in any of the ones I read: Another reason for taking AP classes is that you are in a class with other motivated students. Also, being in regular (non-AP) classes is SO BORING!! I would go crazy if I didn’t have my AP classes! Regular classes involve busy work, disruptive students, and intellectual apathy. In addition, AP students are, in general, more responsible and morally guided. For example, in my BC Calculus class of 12, no one drinks/parties, does drugs, or is promiscuous. (And we’re not geeks, either, we just choose to behave responsibly.) I definitely cannot say the same for the populations in the regular classes I have to take.</p>
<p>As far as actually taking the AP test goes, if you’ve been working all year, then you should be prepared. The only reason I could understand not taking it is if you know that you’ll still have to take the class in college because it’s required with your major.</p>
<p>cpt:</p>
<p>Although I prefer that students spend all four years in college to take advantage of as many courses the college offers, I understand that many do want to take Advanced Standing. In such cases, having AP credit as opposed to college course credit can be of real benefit. While some colleges give credit for college classes taken in high school, some do not. And it’s not even because the college is unknown. Case in point: my S is eligible for AS because of the 6 AP he took (he needed 4 scores of 5 to qualify); but none of the 9 Harvard classes he took earn him college credit at Harvard. Of course, that was not the point of his taking the classes, and they have enabled him to place into more advanced classes; but for some families, this may be an important consideration.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not. Methods Of Inquiry is an undergraduate course offered through the SUNY at Buffalo Graduate School of Education.</p>