<p>Not all Us will accept on-line courses. The one course that did NOT transfer for our D when she transferred from CC to an out-of-state private U was the one on-line course she took. After the advisor at the private U told her they rarely accepted credits for on-line courses, she didn’t take any more on-line courses at her CC.</p>
<p>The U did accept the other CC courses as well as the summer school courses in German she took, providing she passed 3rd semester German at private U, which she did. Her GPA from other schools did not apply at her private U, but the coursework and non-on-line credits did. It’s crucial for kids who transfer to work with target U to be sure as much as possible will transfer.</p>
<p>Some majors like architecture are a 5-year program, which can end up being even longer the pace and coursework proves too rigorous. Many engineers may take longer than 4 years as well, especially if they don’t declare engineering as an entering freshman and/or double-major or have a minor with a lot of requirements. To avoid these issues, the dean of engineering recommended that most kids don’t bother with a minor or double-major unless they REALLY want one. </p>
<p>S found that advice very freeing, so he took courses in geology and other things that interested him; he even founded a rock climbing club and presented a geology paper at a conference and wrote a paper that was accepted to a journal on geology, as well as engineering research and published papers.</p>
<p>Our son took three online courses from state universities, two from UIUC’s NetMath program. I don’t believe that there was any indication on the transcripts that they were online courses. Things may have changed though - this was back in the mid-2000s.</p>
<p>That was in response to a previous post that claimed that remedial courses in college only happened in California, not wherever that poster was. Pretty sure that any big flagship state university has at least a few students in remedial courses (and so do privates even just a little less selective than the super-selective schools).</p>
<p>I’m just happy DD goes to school in the UK. In and out in 3 years. They do not accomodate part-time, transfers, or extra semesters. The student occupies a treasured slot in a particular major, and the kids understand what that means and how hard it is to earn one of those slots.</p>
<p>I think the OP should look at other developed nations in the article, and ask why this seems to be a uniquely American problem.</p>
<p>Forgot to say it doesn’t bother me if the college doesn’t give credit for the AP classes, because if they are going to a world class university, don’t you think their professors are better? My kid’s take APs so that when they get to college they are prepared. At S2’s school they give you units for your AP’s but they don’t really count for GE’s, etc… so they give you a slightly better registration time.</p>
<p>There are actually three different ways AP scores may or may not be used by a college:</p>
<p>a. Credit units. If the student completes all subject requirement for major and breadth requirements, then s/he can take fewer credit units at the college before graduation (though many of the more academically motivated will still take the usual number of credit units anyway). Or the credit units from AP scores may change class standing for registration purposes.</p>
<p>b. Subject credit. The student can use the AP score to satisfy a subject requirement in lieu of taking a course, in the process gaining a free elective in place of the required course.</p>
<p>c. Placement into more advanced courses. The student can start in a more advanced course than the usual beginning one (most common in math), in the process gaining a free elective in place of the skipped course.</p>
<p>It is not necessarily true that one implies the others.</p>
<p>At some schools which do not accept AP scores for subject credit or placement, the schools have their own placement procedures so that students need not repeat stuff they already know.</p>
<p>Professors get tenure mostly based on research, not teaching, especially at “world-class” universities. The physics professors can probably teach upper-level courses such as quantum mechanics and thermodynamics better than high school physics teachers, but the latter have more experience teaching introductory and AP physics and may be better at it.</p>
<p>Bel: I know what you mean, and you are right, especially when it comes to math and science. But say you are a math/science major and you use your APs to fulfill your GE’s, you might be missing out on taking a class outside of your major with say a fantastic History professor. So I guess I as UCB suggested above, I all for it counting for units and placing you into more advance classes, but am OK with it if it doesn’t count for subject credit.</p>
<p>Physics is not a great example here, because the AP physics C syllabus is less complete or less advanced than the physics courses at many universities, particularly in E&M (where the university physics courses often assume more advanced math than AP does).</p>
<p>Math may be a better example, since many students go straight from AP calculus to more advanced math in university, but the quality of high school AP teaching (as well as teaching in universities) varies, and the apparent recent trend to slow-pacing calculus in high school (AB one year, rest of BC the next year) may leave students from these high schools unaccustomed to the pace that math courses in universities run at.</p>
<p>Of course, it has long been the case that colleges do their own placement testing in foreign language even in the absence of AP scores, since high school foreign language courses or heritage ability often result in ability beyond the beginner course.</p>
<p>Why did it take them THAT long to come to their senses. </p>
<p>One could hope that the rest of the BIB (Big Ivy Boys) will follow soon and nip that boondoggle in the butt, and by doing so, force those snakeoil programs to revert to their only valid intended purpose of Advanced Placement.</p>
<p>And speaking about hope, one could also hope that we might have a world in which high schools would stop pretending being able to teach college courses, and college and universities not having to dedicate massive resources to remedial courses to just fill the holes left by the K-12 education. </p>
<p>High schools that are high schools and colleges that are colleges … what a novel idea!</p>
<p>The school DD is attending will not accept AP credits in their major and other AP’s depend on the course and the score. They use AP tests for placement in foreign languages if that applies. We are not counting on a lot of credits transferring.</p>
<p>One way that homeschoolers that lived near Cambridge used as a leg up was to take a bunch of courses at the Harvard Extension school or sit in on regular full-time classes. I don’t know if that approach still works but perhaps they take their own credits.</p>
<p>In practice, students will be at varying levels of ability and motivation in any given subject. A sharp dividing line between high school math and college math would leave the better math students exhausting math offerings before finishing high school, while slower math students may still not successfully complete the top level of high school math. The line gets even fuzzier in foreign language, where many college students start a new language in the beginner course, while others start in a more advanced course in college after completing high school courses in that language.</p>
<p>While the explosion of “AP lites” has been of dubious value, the original purpose of AP, which is to best accommodate students of varying levels of ability and motivation in the “transition years” (high school senior and college freshman), still needs to be handled somehow, rather than forcing students into “one size fits all” high school and college curricula. (Some colleges have their own placement testing so that new freshmen need not repeat stuff that they know well; not sure if Dartmouth has such.)</p>
<p>Dartmouth seems to be acting like a state college in the credit system and to go all the way to the other end, i.e., not give any, kind of sounds odd. They currently have 3 separate credits for history, one for environmental studies, one for statistics. Their peers don’t give those out.</p>
<p>However, many of the credits that Dartmouth gives for AP scores are stuff like “unspecified history credit” or for courses which do not give placement into more advanced courses (probably less rigorous courses for non-majors looking for breadth courses). So Dartmouth does not seem to be especially generous with subject credit or placement; it does appear that the main effect of the change is to reduce the potential for students to graduate early by using the credit for AP scores as free elective credit (hence the revenue gain that some believe is the main motivation), assuming that it already has (or will create) its own placement testing procedures for students who can start in a more advanced course than the beginner ones in math, foreign languages, etc…</p>
<p>UCBalumnus posted "Actually, 4-year graduation rate at Berkeley went up from under 40% in the 1980s to about 70% now. This is now among the highest of public universities, and is reflective of how the selectivity has greatly increased since the 1980s.</p>
<p>The “difficulty” graduating in 4 years had mostly to do with the students. In the 1980s, most Berkeley freshmen had to take a remedial English course, compared to under 10% now. Remedial math enrollment was also higher than it was now. In addition, a lot of students voluntarily took only 12-13 credit units per semester instead of averaging 15 that was needed to graduate in 8 semesters. The low costs back then (especially in-state, but out-of-state cost was also low back then) meant that the cost penalty for an extra semester was not that great. There were probably various reasons for taking light course loads: (a) could not handle a full 15 credit unit schedule academically, (b) spending too much time on fermented beverage sociology, or (c) working one’s way through college (much more doable back then when costs were much lower)."</p>
<p>Thanks for the update. i didn’t realize that more kids are graduating in 4 years than back in my day.</p>
<p>"“unspecified history credit” or for courses which do not give placement into more advanced courses "</p>
<p>Unless one wants to be a history major, does it matter what credit one gets for three high school history APs? I look at history credits as the most useless ones since most schools of Dartmouth caliber don’t have a requirement to take any in college as a core requirement. So why provide credit when one may never take a course in that subject?</p>
<p>Would it make sense to estimate the chance of a student graduating in 4 years by checking his/her approximate rank in the entering class and comparing it with the 4-year graduation rate?</p>
<p>For example, if the student is in the top 25% of the entering freshman class of colleges with 50% 4-year graduation rates, or the middle 50% of the entering freshman class of colleges with 75% 4-year graduation rates, would that be an indication of a good chance of graduating in 4 years?</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the student is in the middle 50% of the entering freshman class of colleges with 25% 4-year graduation rates, then the risk of late graduation is likely higher.</p>
<p>Of course, individual student characteristics like need for remedial courses, undecided major, or high workload major may increase the risk of late graduation, while having usable advanced placement (through AP/IB/college courses) going in may decrease the risk of late graduation.</p>