<p>Asking someone who is familiar with Exeter!</p>
<p>None. The faculty felt the guidelines for the AP classes were too restrictive. </p>
<p>However: " All departments offer courses well above the normal secondary school level. Many students take Advanced Placement tests. In May 2008, 238 students took 437 advanced placement tests in 30 subject areas."</p>
<p>are classes difficult at exeter (just in general), comparing to regular public school?</p>
<p>Son is entering in the fall so we’ll see- I am sure they will be more difficult grade wise.
You should as PAE teacher- she/he has a thread here on CC for questions …</p>
<p>Yea, but PEAteacher doesn’t seem to be active anymore…</p>
<p>What are you talking about? I posted yesterday.</p>
<p>Just as you would suspect, classes at the top boarding schools in the country tend to be more challenging than at your average public school. The good news is that if you get in, you can most likely handle the challenge; in fact, you will enjoy being challenged, you won’t get bored, and you will learn a lot.</p>
<p>Oh, I meant that the thread you started “Ask a teacher” does seem to be active…</p>
<p>Anyway, do Exeter students have textbooks for their classes or do teachers give handouts?</p>
<p>I think it depends on the class, but I had to buy books for most of my courses at Exeter.</p>
<p>And do teachers follow the textbook chapter by chapter (strictly), or is it more like skip and pick, in a random order?</p>
<p>It really depends on the class. But it’s fairly common for teachers to supplement textbooks with handouts or to only assign selected chapters out of textbooks.</p>
<p>Math classes work on the unique Exeter “handout” system (printed problem sets, not a single book I’ve seen). Others tend to have very expensive textbooks: expect to pay $500 per term on used textbooks. But you can also find everything at the library.</p>
<p>Although Exeter doesn’t have AP classes, it has a full range of on-campus AP tests available every May (including many more subjects than I’ve seen offered at local public high schools). The students, unsurprisingly, do very well (the AP stats are available in the school profile). The typical Exeter student will have taken many more AP tests than a typical high school student, despite the absence of “official” AP classes.</p>
<p>“None” as an answer to the original question is not quite correct. Although no classes are specifically designated as AP classes, the better answer is that all Exeter classes contribute to the possible attainment of Advanced Placement standing. The AP program originated back to the days when college freshmen curricula were pretty much carved in stone (freshman English, Math, History, etc.). For first year college students who had matriculated from the HADES schools ( odd acronym, I don’t remember too many hot days during my three years at PEA ) the curricula was pretty much review and a boring review at that. In the 1950s this led to the first year being branded as “the freshman folly” as many students just partied until sophmore year. In the 70s we referred to the frosh experience as “the year of living dangerously”; some people literally just did not survive the party.</p>
<pre><code>The AP program was designed and implemented to allow those with appropriate test scores to take classes that were not painfully boring review and to even enter college as sophomores with full unit credit, thereby eliminating a year of college expense. I had friends who negotiated new cars, european summers and even cash out of their parents based on successful AP status.
But the most important thing to understand is that the AP program is intended to qualify and quantify a standard freshman level knowledge set and extend that standard beyond the HADES schools.
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