<p>“At the same time, other departments, such as chemistry and biology, urge their students to take Cornell’s introductory course even if they have AP credit. They say that in their experience, the Cornell introductory courses in these subjects are more rigorous than AP and that students who try to take second-level courses with AP as their only background do not tend to do well.”</p>
<p>What I don’t understand is why Cornell doesn’t recognize that huge numbers of students have had AP Bio and offer two intro courses, one for those who have had the AP and another for those who haven’t. That way first year bio students wouldn’t have to be bored repeating material for the small amount of new stuff. I find it hard to believe that Cornell’s intro bio course can cover that much more than our son’s AP biology course. My husband was amazed - it certainly covered more than he’d had in first year biology at Harvard. Admittedly, there’s a lot of new material in bio from the last 20 years, but still!</p>
<p>The AP-Bio course was the target of the biggest criticism by the National Research Council because it focused too much on “old-fashioned biology.” I think that is why AP-Bio is not currently used for placing out at Harvard, no matter what your husband’s experience was 20 years ago!</p>
<p>I also talked to a Bio prof a few years ago when S was thinking of taking Intro Bio (owing to scheduling conflict, he could not ake AP-Bio). The prof claimed that students who had taken AP-Bio were not necessarily good at critical thinking, their class having focused too much on memorization. I don’t know whether that is a valid criticism or not; the Intro Bio class used the same textbook as the AP-Bio class.</p>
<p>Marian, MIT already has a core…and even kids with rigorous HS prep find it very tough going. Moreover, the HASS requirements (Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences) are not really content- based for Freshman… they’re designed to use literature, or social issues, or history, or whatever, as a vehicle for students working on their writing skills, critical thinking, or other skill-based competencies. My son placed out of the writing requirement after taking the MIT placement test (had also gotten 5’s on both US and Euro History) and he still found his Freshman HASS classes very, very demanding. Each paper was accompanied by a two-page assessment by either the TA or the Prof on how to construct a tighter, more convincing argument, which sources he might have used to make a more compelling case for his point of view, additional research he could have done, etc.</p>
<p>So-- few kids like repetition… so if your son feels he’s “done” US History he can find lots of classes to fulfill his core requirement from other disciplines, but I can assure you the rigor of the writing and thinking is not what kids get in HS.</p>
<p>Did anyone ask themselves, “why AP credits are not being given or only given after achieving a very high score on the AP exam?”</p>
<p>I think one problem is that the scoring on the exams is too easy. I think my son said he could get as little as 65% on the multiple choice on one of the tests and still be in the running for a five.</p>
<p>“MIT’s study is a variation of one conducted at Harvard about ten years ago. 2 or 3 departments found that students who had achieved a 4 on the AP did more poorly in the next level of class than students who had taken the introductorysemester-length class in the subject at Harvard. However, students who had achieved a 5 did as well. On that basis, it was decided to accept only scores of 5.”</p>
<p>I think that accepting only 5’s is probably a wise decision for these “rigorous colleges”. </p>
<p>However, that said, I still find it rather disconcerting that the same college which is so concerned about the student’s preparation for the “next level” that it refuses to accept any AP credit (even a 5) allows their students to spend an entire year taking foundation courses on a “pass/fail” basis. I am certain that if a similar study were undertaken, it would show that students who “barely passed” their introductory courses “did more poorly in the next level of class” than those who would have score an A.</p>
<p>The approach you suggest is exactly what Cornell’s chemistry department does. They have a special honors introductory chemistry course aimed at students who have taken AP Chemistry. I don’t know why biology hasn’t tried that approach. It does seem to be a good idea.</p>
<p>Another interesting issue concerning APs is that many of the most selective colleges allow AP credit in at least some cases but do not allow students to count APs toward distribution/general education requirements. I suspect that this reflects an understanding that a student who took an AP course may have mastered a lot of material but may not necessarily have done enough true college-level research and writing – experiences that the colleges don’t want students to miss out on.</p>
<p>The MIT pass/no-record (P/NR) freshman year grading system is a different discussion altogether from the AP credit discussion. P/NR allows students to adjust to the unbelieveably challenging atmosphere and expectations at MIT. I can attest to the fact that some of the top students from the top high schools in the country get to MIT and realize that they need to ramp-up their work ethic even further and learn to meet even higher expectations than they’ve placed on themselves in high school. P/NR lets them learn how to swim before they’re thrown into the ocean.</p>
<p>(Note: it is Pass/No-Record, not Pass/Fail. If a student does not pass a course freshman year, it doesn’t appear on their record. And there is a lot of advisor and academic support to help keep classes from disappearing off one’s record – the goal is to help everyone pass.)</p>
<p>mootmom, how does P/NR affect premedical students? Do they have to postpone taking science courses required of pre-meds until their 2nd year in order to have a letter grade to show the med school admissions committees?</p>
<p>First, let me correct myself: first semester at MIT is P/NR, second semester is ABC/NR. Official website rational states:
There is a thread on the MIT board here discussing medical school admissions and the effect (if any) of the MIT first semester P/NR policy. The short answer seems to be that few med schools demand that MIT release the actual grades for first semester freshman, Johns Hopkins being the one people mention most often.</p>
<p>I don’t object to the existence of AP classes themselves and am glad our high school offers lots of them. My problem is with the way AP’s are used as part of the college admissions game, which puts students in a situation in which they feel they have to take the maximum number of “hard” AP’s, even in subjects that don’t interest them, sometimes precluding them from taking challenging AP’s, and especially from taking non-AP’s, that might interest them more. </p>
<p>My kid had a experience somewhat parallel to what happens at runnersmom’s high school. At all of our college admission sessions, we were told how important it was to take the most challenging courses available, with a tacit agreement that AP’s are the hardest. If the high school offered a lot, the student was expected to take a lot. At our hs, it goes a step further, so that the “hard” AP’s are identified and even if the student is more interested in one of the “easier” AP’s, there is a subtle pressure to forgo it in favor of the tough one. Hence, kids who are more interested in environmental science are nevertheless taking AP physics and APUSH trumps economics, irrespective of the interests of the student. Classes that don’t have an AP designation, such as Shakespeare and geology and genetics are seen as not cutting it, so good students who want top universities end up with a kind of generic “hard” AP everything schedule. It just seems to be such a waste for a child with no interest in physics whatsoever to be slogging through it AP when there is another challenging non-AP that the student would prefer, all because, realistically, in a school that offers a ton of AP’s, kids with wall to wall “hard” AP’s have better college admission opportunities.</p>
<p>Mootmom, thanks for those links; they suggest that not so many students will end up passing the intro classes based on the MIT placement test. (I have a son who is applying early to MIT this year, so I’m folliowiing the news there with interest.)</p>
<p>I think it’s a great idea to have multiple tracks of intro science classes, I hope MIT develops some. Harvard physics does this with the 15a/16 split,but the biologists have decided that everyone regardless of background should start with Life Sciences 1. Meanwhile, over at Columbia, students with a strong grasp of AP chemistry can start with an honors organic chemisty class, the physics department has two tracks that both start with basic mechanics, and students can talk their way into upper level bio classes with having taken the intro sequence.</p>
<p>This seems like an appropriate place to quote, once again, my D’s comment on her first-year core Humanities course at Chicago:</p>
<p>“They have a math placement test and six different levels of math you can place into, so that I don’t slow down someone who knows what he’s doing and cares about it. I wish they had some kind of literature placement test, to see whether you have any idea how to read, write, or talk about poetry. Half the kids in my section don’t have any idea how to do that, don’t feel like that they ought to learn, and think it’s OK to take up class time expressing their contempt for it. I’ve done that already – it was called high school. The people here are a little smarter, but it’s fundamentally the same thing.”</p>
<p>Somehow I completely forgot to mention earlier that MIT does already offer multiple levels of most of the intro math/science classes. There are, for instance, five versions of the multivariable calc course: 18.02, 18.02A (with review of single variable), 18.022 (in greater depth), 18.023 (with applications), 18.024 (with theory).</p>
<p>I still see the value in repeating first-year courses at MIT – I took calculus through my local community college as a high school senior, and got straight A’s… I decided to re-take the course at MIT my first term and got a C-. (On pass/no record, of course, thank heavens.)</p>
<p>At schools like MIT, the introductory science courses are not designed merely to teach students that the central dogma of molecular biology is DNA –> RNA –> protein, but also what to do with that information, how to design experiments to test it, etc. I took MIT’s introductory biology course (because I did not take AP bio in high school), and I was much more prepared for my upper-division biology electives than my classmates who had used AP credit; they knew how to answer multiple-choice questions about biology, but biology tests and problem sets at MIT are never multiple-choice.</p>
<p>There are some students whose high school backgrounds or self-studies would prepare them adequately for the next level of science classes, and those students are free to take the advanced standing exams offered during orientation. There are a lot of students who don’t fall into that category, and they’d be well-served by taking the introductory classes.</p>
<p>Aedar, remember that the passing percentages for the MIT advanced standing exams are with the current AP policy – students who got a 5 on the AP test would presumably have a higher rate of passing an advanced standing exam in a subject, but do not currently take the tests because they can get credit with their AP scores. The students who currently take the tests generally either did not take the AP course in that subject or did not earn a 5.</p>
<p>Some colleges do have different levels of introductory courses. For example, in math, at Harvard, there are 6 different levels or flavors of Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra (19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 55). The first 3 can be said to be aimed at different types of majors, the last 3 are different levels of difficulty.
There are also 2 levels of intro physics, one for those who got a 5 on BC-Calc and one who got a lesser score (there are also courses that are really more in line with “Physics for Poets” that do not require Calc).</p>
<p>There is a certain irony here, given that Johns Hopkins undergraduates also do not receive letter grades as freshmen, for much the same reasons as at MIT.</p>
<p>At USoCal, my S was given the max (32) credits for the 13 AP tests he passed with mostly 5s + the A he got for a college intro statistics course. This gives him advanced standing, so he was a sophomore before the 1st day of school but doesn’t meet many of his engineering requirements (even tho USC uses many of the exact same books that he covered from cover to cover in his AP calc & physics courses).
As a parent, I’m somewhat relieved because his AP courses gave him excellent teachers & great motivated classmates in HS. He says the classes in college are easy (probably because mostly review so far). This should help him start college off with a nice high GPA that hopefully he can easily maintain & keep his merit aid. This will allow him to devote his energies to finding his niche & the ECs that interest him in college & the engineering dept. I think the credits he’s taken only exempt him from 2 courses he’d otherwise have to take, but he’s fine with that as well.</p>
<p>I am very happy that his AP courses had great teachers & fewer than 20 students (sometimes as few as 4). He learned the material well, which I’m sure can only help him in college.</p>
<p>So if I understand correctly students at MIT will be required to take a more “varied” (required) curriculum at the same time as having to take more introductory classes with most of the AP’s not counting. The end result would seem to be less credits available during the 4 years to take what you want and less credits available to take more advanced classes in areas that you are interested in. Seems like a loss for the student. </p>
<p>My son, like most kids who love to learn, is so excited to see all the possible courses available to him that he has trouble figuring out how to fit everything into 8 semesters even when taking the maximum credits allowed.</p>
<p>His AP’s (almost all 5’s) gave him 52 credits at his school. He was advised even with 5’s to not use those to count towards his major courses for the same reason MIT is stating. So he gets to keep 40.</p>
<p>This said, he is thrilled to not have to take additional coursework in areas that do not interest him and would take his AP’s all over again for this reason. The flexibility this has allowed him is amazing. He will still go 4 years…just more of the stuff he loves.</p>