I made a interesting set of decisions and decided to opt out of AP Bio, AP Human, WHAP, and APUSH. 4 AP classes that seemed common among the top students at my school. I did not feel ready for AP courses my freshman year and so I took honors Bio and World Geography, I was not interested in WHAP sophomore year, and junior year I decided to take AP Latin instead of APUSH (And so I am taking regular USH). However, I am interested in Econ and Gov’t seems slightly intriguing so next year I will probably pursue those courses senior year (ending with around 11 AP’s). I have been excelling in the AP courses I took last semester and am happy with the decision I made. However being in a competitive school, there is a slight uncertainty I have about those decisions. Albeit I cannot change this now but hopefully colleges will see the reasoning for my choice.
@Verit4s, your logic sounds fine. You won’t have any trouble, especially if you have done well in the APs you have chosen.
@intparent Thanks for the feedback
I wouldn’t go as far to say “intellectual wasteland”, but from what I remember when I was in high school, when there were far fewer AP courses and tests available, there was a definite hierarchy of course rigor:
- more rigor: honors and AP courses (at that high school, the honors tracks included the AP courses; honors and AP were not separate tracks like some describe)
- regular courses on the mainstream college-prep track (e.g. regular courses in US history, English, math, foreign language, biology/chemistry/physics)
- less rigor: regular courses that were nominally-academic electives that were not on the mainstream college-prep track (e.g. social studies other than history/civics, sciences other than biology/chemistry/physics)
It appears that some of the newer “AP lite” type of courses like human geography have replaced some of the courses in the least rigorous group of courses listed above. That is a beneficial effect of the “AP lite” courses, but it points out the sad fact that the “AP” label may be what gives high schools incentive to offer more worthwhile academic electives than they would otherwise offer, even though the extension of the “AP” label to such courses devalues and clouds the original purpose of AP courses, which is to allow advanced students to get advanced placement in college.
I posted this originally in Dec as a response to another AP thread, but I think is applies here as well:
Other side of the coin - AP courses can be very helpful. One of my kids found time in HS to be a student leader and 2 sport athlete, took 12 AP courses, scored 5’s on all of them, and entered a highly selective school as a Freshman with Sophomore standing. They will graduate in 4 years with a Masters degree in engineering. So sometimes a lot of AP courses can be a good thing.
But they did not take the AP courses to “look good for college admissions”. They took the AP courses because they would have been bored with lower level courses, and obviously they could handle the work load. YMMV.
Added in edit 1/4/16: None of my kids took AP courses to “look impressive”. Nobody should take AP courses, or do ECs to “look impressive”. They should take the courses, or ECs because it looks like fun, they have an interest in the area, or want to learn more.
In my kids’ school, regular classes are definitely boring and unchallenging. My D deliberately chose to take all Honors and AP courses to avoid being in the regular classes. I her opinion, the “dumb” kids take regular classes because they don’t want to work.
My S, though, is dyslexic and dysgraphic. He takes regular English, the rest Honors. He is definitely not dumb, and I have had to disabuse my D of this idea. He felt that he had a challenging course load as a freshman without struggling to do well in his least favorite course. Honors classes in our school are definitly more rigorous, and in fact, I think in some cases are more difficult than AP classes.
I have to say though, the regular classes do seem very very easy. My son has hardly any work in his English class.
I will encourage him to do as many APs as he is interested in, because he will probably always have a gap as far as English classes go. I don’t think 12 is necessarily more impressive than a kid who does 7 and is able to show his or her interest in the subjects taken by reinforcing it in the college application. In our HS, only a very few kids can take AP bio as sophomores. Everyone else has to wait until they are juniors for APs, so it is VERY difficult to do more than 8 APs, and I have never heard of a kid do so.
I don’t know about “most schools”, but I do know that my kids avoided most regular classes because they found them too easy and quite boring.
Every kid is different and every HS is different, so there is no universal answer. Our local public HS offers more than 20 AP classes, the more serious students gravitate to those and the school regularly produces one or both of our state’s “State AP Scholar” award winners. I expect a student at this HS would need 12 or so APs to get the “most rigorous” designation on their counselor’s recommendation.
It irritates me when people denigrate those who choose to take a lot of APs. Yes, it’s true that it isn’t the case that “the most APs wins”, but for a kid to take a full complement of math/science APs, or the full course of history APs, or both, is a good thing. And it doesn’t necesarily make the kid a “textureless grind”.
Our high school offers over 20 APs, but there is no way to take all of them. It is like pulling teeth to get any acceleration at the middle school beyond Algebra 1 and Regents Living Environment (Biology) in 8th grade. The honors track kids will start the Level 2 of whatever language they took in middle school. Science course use an extra period for labs 2-3 times a week which will alternate generally with the required four years of gym. The result is it would be very difficult to take 12 APs even if one wanted to. We are considered a pretty good high school.
My kids had years of experience in non-honors, non-AP classes. This was more than sufficient for us to know that they would not learn much if they continued to enroll in the same classes. (Eg, “When should I schedule that appointment, which class can you miss?” “It doesn’t matter which class I miss because we don’t do anything anyhow”) Moreover, in high school, those classes have suffered a severe brain-drain because the top third or so of the students is no longer in them.
I went to a different school with a much higher average-achieving student body and better students in the regular level classes–think Lake Woebegone. And I bought into the idea being promoted on this thread that I shouldn’t work hard at subjects that didn’t interest me. I took one regular level class instead of honors and I skipped one AP class in favor of the regular one. These were the worst mistakes I made in high school. The regular classes were painfully boring and I learned nothing. Maybe some people think that’s a good thing. I think it’s good for people to get a well-rounded education. You never know how your interests may evolve over the years, or what new ones you may discover in a well-taught class with students who want to learn and an engaging curriculum.