I find it interesting that so many freshman take AP Human Geography. At our high school no one is allowed to take any APs until Junior year, and AP HG is reserved only for seniors. I wonder why. Maybe they target it to kids who would otherwise not take any AP’s during high school, just so they can have one?
For many high schools, APHG is, for all intents and purposes, a waystage to AP; it’s an introduction which allows honors students to get a feel for what a “real” AP is like. (Yeah, I have a bias against APHG.) 
APHG is a primer. Most 9th grade kids take it. D is currently taking it. She does not find it difficult at all, just alot of busy work (map coloring). It will not count for any college credit (and it should not). Kids are working on DBQs and things they have not seen before.
Based on S’s experiences I agree APs are soooooooo teacher dependent.
I’d like to add sub categories
Although no longer called AP Physics B, course should’ve had a subcategory “extra light.” When S took AP exam, after finishing multiple choice section, he realized that of the 7 free response questions, he had never seen any of the material in 5 of 7 questions. After test students, many who attended top UCs, Stanford, Ivies, howled about teacher’s failing to cover material. Teacher could only apologize saying he got off on a tangent first semester, oops.
Another sub category I’d like to add is “joke” for AP Euro. On the one hand teacher was a disorganized mess. On the other hand, teacher arguably made up for short comings by considering a passing score 3, 4, 5. After test teacher allowed students to turn in extra credit completed in May to raise grades one level in BOTH semesters. When AP results came out, students who had performed at C level throughout year, could sprinkle in some extra credit, and then magically turn those Cs into two semesters of weighted As. Truly a collegiate learning experience.
Another category I’d like to add is “WT…” AP Bio (sophomore course): at intro lecture section given freshman year, teacher explained to students how he felt outlining then discussing each chapter (yes they had a book) was critical. Students who signed up for course had to read/outline 4 chapters over summer, turn in outlines on day one which he would review, make comments, and return to students to provide guidance with future course outlining. Well, the teacher moved (apartments) first week and in the move he lost all the outlines. He shrugged it off as no big thing and further outlining would not be required.
AP Calc BC: same teacher taught both H precalc and Calc BC. Teacher told students she’d be done with H Precalc around March junior year as there simply was not that much Precalc material. She would then move onto Calc. If students got Calc they should move on to Calc BC, otherwise take Calc AB. This was a teacher who really had her act together.
Not unusual. Many honors precalc courses start the AB Calc concepts 4th quarter to relieve some of the pressure in jamming all calc AB/BC material before mid-May of the following year.
@me29034 AP Human Geo is also a seniors only course at my son’s HS. It is a difficult course…the teacher is really up front about that. Then again, virtually every kid gets a 5 on it. (That is actually true for the majority of APs in his HS; the testing parents will settle for nothing less than a 5 and put extraordinary pressure on the teachers. Sigh.) And my son did get credit for it at college.
I would definitely add AP Chinese to the ‘lite’ or ‘joke’ AP classes. Son got a 5 on the test from everything he learned from Saturday Chinese school. He never took the class in school even though all of his Chinese friends tried to persuade him that it was an easy A.
He liked his AP US History and European History teachers although they prepared their students in different ways for the test. He felt better prepared for the writing sections for European History as his teacher gave them lots of writing assignments and graded pretty harshly. His APUSH teacher was very thorough in preparing students for the multiple choice but not so much with writing. He ended up with 5’s on both tests (an oddity as most Asian kids aren’t big into history).
His school is an anomaly where teachers who graded harshly generally prepared the students so well to a point where students who were getting a C+/B- ended up getting 4’s and 5’s on the Chemistry and Calc BC tests without any problem.
I don’t think his AP Bio teacher had more than a third of the class get A’s but close to 90% of the class got a 5 on the test and most of the kids ended up getting 750+ on the SAT 2 Biology exams.
My son never took APES but at his school it was considered AP lite in that most of the students taking the class were not the STEM kids (this is a Top-25 high school in CA).
Most kids in the school took AP Language and Compositon instead of AP Literature and Composition as they thought that Language was the easier of the 2 courses. Son took Literature and was surprised by the amount of writing they did. His teacher had them write essays every week using questions from old AP exams and every other week they had in-class essays. Son actually enjoyed English for the first time as his teacher was well respected in school and gave honest feedback on all writing assignments. The students also had a graded assignment where they spent 2 weeks writing Common App and UC application essays and the teacher would add her comments.
In the end it appeared that the Literature class ended up doing more writing than the Language class, but the students were well prepared and everyone ended up getting 5’s on the AP test.
@toowonderful interesting.
In our school AP World is the first history AP mostly because it gets combined with the required Global History requirement of NY which is a two year course - so the AP kids cover both the leftovers of the GH curriculum and the AP curriculum as sophomores. My younger son took it the first year it was offered. He got a 5, but many of the better students in the class did not. I think he had the advantage of a lot of outside knowledge, and just being a good test taker. We offer APUSH junior year which is the standard year for regular US history - at least when my kids took it the English teachers were teaching American lit to go along with it. IRCC 70-80% got 4s and 5s. Seniors take AP Euro. It had one of the best teachers in the school and also had a very high pass rate. No one took it who wasn’t interested in the subject. AP Gov and AP Econ were combined with the NY Econ or Gov semester requirement. Generally taken as seniors - considered easy.
Self-selection has to be part of it. Just like the really strong math students take Calc BC, the not-so-strong science students will gravitate to APES, at least in our HS.
Definitely not worthless, but it really is not much more than a subset of Bio. If I recall, Campbell’s covers the ES material in the back end 5 chapters of the Bio text. Thus, it becomes really easy material for anyone who has previously taken AP Bio.
But the issue for APES, IMO, is the lack of standardized curriculum. As a result, it can end up with a lot of busy work, depending on the teacher: points for beach cleanup, anyone?
My D got the science credit she needed for college with her 4 on APES - and kept room in her HS schedule that the lab sciences (which required either 1.5 or 2 periods) would have taken. She used that extra time to take another AP class, another score, and another base credit out of the way.
We have to look more I think at how adcoms see it, and I’ve mentioned before, there are a few APs that are considered gold standards for the highly selective colleges, these are ones where the colleges know are tough regardless of teacher or high school:
STEM - AP Calc, AP Chem, AP Physics C (mech and e/m)
non-STEM - APUSH, APLAC, APLit, AP in a language
@theloniusmonk Why APUSH and not APEURO which was far harder? I don’t know what APLAC is.
Colleges love AP Euro in addition to APUSH. APLAC is English and Composition, I believe.
AP English Language and Compostition
Ahh, our kids call it APLang
^ Colleges love AP Euro in addition to APUSH
I think they really should. I feel that APUSH isn’t incomplete national history without cultural background from the rest of world.
^ Europe is only one part of the rest of the world.
^ Great point. Well, I didn’t mean it exclusively. AP World is also very valuable. Either is better than none but USH.
Our current APUSH is heavily focused on its British Colony period. Therefore learning UK and surrounding Europe’s history up to the point is highly helpful.
Personally, I think we are too focused on the short period of time and end up memorizing minuscule timeline and names, and not enough historical understanding of dynamic movement, etc. Other countries learn thousands years of their own history and then put an equal value on the world history, leading to a big picture understanding of civilization. We learn 300 years of our history with not enough value on world history and don’t get that benefit.
Those in other countries don’t necessarily get some better understanding.
USH is supposed to come up to at least WW2.
^ Maybe not better, then a different. When you learn any history for the period of 5000 years, you see how humanity has evolved from the neolithic period. When you add world history to that, then you have some, albeit vague, understanding of the entire civilization. For that, you don’t need to memorize specific dates and names and what was General Lee’s 3rd offence route and what not. You can’t get that understanding with 300 years of USH alone.