D18 says her APUSH class gave a lot of global context. So much so that the next year in AP World History, she felt like once they hit the 18th C the material was all review.
@ShrimpBurrito, That’s great for her. US History can vary so much depends on who teaches it I am sure. D took US history in community college as two semesters courses. The first semester was exactly as I was worried, lots of facts to memorize without enough global context. The second semester professor selected a few major events and they did deeper research on them in the context of how society has progressed through them, while almost ignoring the rest. It was a great way of teaching in true college level learning, but still without global context.
But you can see one experience isn’t necessarily the next person’s.
In the end, a lot of colleges don’t care what is considered a light or heavy AP since many classes will count for general education credits and not towards the major. Or else a placement exam has to be taken prior to enrollment.
^ But they do care during admission, and put more weight on math and hard science AP classes taken, regardless if it was taken in semester or yearlong (not much on AP exam scores though), so maybe we sort them out that way.
My ap world class should’ve been called the history of western civilization.
That class is the reason I never took a history class as an undergrad and greatly informs how I shouldn’t teach history.
Interesting because I remember my son’s World History class doing a whole bunch of the history of Islam. They did a skit about Ibn Battuta. And when they got to European history it was a lot of social history, less political history. That said, my kid being my kid, he wrote his final research paper about Gustavos Adolphus mostly military history. He actually found primary sources in English at the NY Public Library! In APUSH he wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis so I know they got at least that far.
@SculptorDad Did she still do well on the AP US History exam even though the community college course was taught differently than normal APUSH?
@suzyQ7, Generally people don’t take AP exams after taking cc courses because there is not much additional benefit to the college credits. I doubt the cc courses have prepared anyone, without additional self study, to do well on either AP or SAT II USH though.
Depends in part on the target college. Most top private colleges, as an example, will not transfer CC credit, but may give AP credit.