<p>I am currently in grade 10 and am planning to take AP Environmental Science, AP Microeconomics, and AP Computer Science A. I was thinking whether or not to do the online course. Will I get the same amount of credit if I self-study or take the online course? Presume I am able to get a 5 on both courses if I self-study… is there any other advantage?</p>
<p>@shijurodhax - If you self study for an AP exam and get a 5, you will get college credit but not get high school credit. If you take an online class and get a 5 then you will get both high school and college credit. There are no extra advantages to self studying other than the final score, but that is a lot. Taking the online course will be a GPA boost (presumably), a high school credit, and college credit. What you’re studying is also more focused.</p>
<p>In my opinion, self studying has its pros and cons. If you are taking a course like AP Art History or AP Music Theory, you might be able to self study. That being said, I am actually taking AP Art History online on FLVS. You might be able to self study AP Microeconomics because its only a 0.5 credit course. To ensure getting a 5, I would suggest taking the course. On the other hand, if you don’t have a lot of time for an extra course then sometimes you just need to do the best you can do.</p>
<p>Hey guys, I’m new to College Confidential but I’ve visited this thread before for insight into AP courses on FLVS. 
People probably aren’t looking to sign up for AP Bio on FLVS right now (in the middle of the school year), but I’m taking it now and just wanted to share some input about it for anyone who might have questions or want to take it in the future!</p>
<p>AP Bio on FLVS has about 90 assignments over the entire course. Most of them are multiple-choice quizzes (sometimes with a few short answers), but a few will be essays/short answer/write-ups, along with “AP Practice” assessments at the end of each module. The quizzes can be terribly specific at times, but (so far in the course–not sure if there’s a change in semester 2) you can retake them. The module exams, however, you cannot retake, and the questions are just as specific as in the quizzes. I manage to get high B’s on them, but this has been dragging my overall grade down to a low A–kind of stressful for me as I approach the semester exam, but I’m sure it will work out fine. It should also be noted that at each module (except for, oddly, 4, which I’m finishing now) there are collaboration-based labs. Basically you do the lab on your own for part 1, but you will have to have a partner to exchange questions with before you can submit part 2. Part 2 is generally the same series of questions about sharing data for every collab. </p>
<p>This course is taking a LOT of my time to complete. I have taken AP Microeconomics on FLVS before (and invested a ton of time to get a 5), but Bio definitely requires a lot more reading. If you are like me and HAVE to take notes when you read the online textbook, each assessment is going to take a while to get to–basically what has been slowing me down this semester. The only thing that is carrying me through crunch time is making myself a checklist of each section I have to read and the number of pages in each. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell how much effort is going to be required for each lesson and plan around that. </p>
<p>So far we have gone over Evolution (which I really enjoyed), Cells and Homeostasis (not so much), Using energy (which focuses mainly on cellular respiration and photosynthesis–more interesting than cells for me, but required a lot more studying outside of the course), and now I’m finishing up with Biological Responses. I’m using the AP Barrons Book as a review throughout the course, and the Barrons flashcards actually have helped with some of the essay-type assignments. </p>
<p>You should be able to do well taking AP Bio on FLVS as long as you apply yourself and keep on track (just like in any other course–you just have to keep at it.) Unless science is your favorite/best subject, I would warn you that this class is going to be a huge time investment. As a senior applying to a bunch of schools and scholarships along with an already heavy load at my high school, taking on the extra load of an AP course on FLVS may not have been the best move–but it should get easier now that all my applications are done.</p>
<p>I hope this helps anyone curious about the class. :)</p>
<p>Thank you Marzipanic for explaining AP Bio.</p>
<p>Has anyone taken AP Calculus AB/BC? I went through all 19 pages of this thread and tried to research more about it on other threads but I can’t seem to find anything.</p>
<p>On a different note, I want to take AP FLVS classes to “pad” my gpa, which I ruined during freshman and early sophomore year ): I figured that this will look better than taking easy dual enrollment courses. I’m thinking of taking AP Computer Science and AP Stats over the summer because I don’t want to overwhelm myself right now. What other AP classes do you guys recommend? After hearing all these disasters with AP environmental I don’t think I want to take that anymore. My school won’t allow me to take courses that are being offered in school so my choices are:</p>
<p>AP Cal AB
AP Cal BC
AP Art History
AP Biology</p>
<p>(Also I’m TERRIBLE at writing so I would like to avoid writing too many essays)</p>
<p>@Oddorable:</p>
<p>I have heard that AP Art History requires a lot of written analysis of art pieces (and the context/time period/etc.), but I don’t have first hand experience to tell you for sure. 
</p>
<p>(Just my 2 cents): If you are a junior, I would take AP Calc AB online even if you are already confident enough with math to pursue BC-- just because you’ll have the time as a senior to take BC (and can “pad” your GPA with 2 Calc classes instead of just AB.) I skipped from Algebra 2 to AB (because I wanted to take Stats junior year) and thought it was awful the first few weeks because I had forgotten a lot. But after reviewing the unit circle and getting the basics down, Calc really isn’t that bad. </p>
<p>Also, I’m not sure about how strict your counselors are about FLVS, but if you find that you cannot accommodate all the AP classes you want into your schedule at school, you should be able to reasonably request to take other APs on FLVS. As far as I know, schools in Florida shouldn’t be able to deny you an online course unless you need pre-requisites to take it.</p>
<p>Haha, but not just on FLVS. I took AP Environmental at school and did the same exact lab…</p>
<p>Has anyone else taken AP US History? I’m kinda worried about taking all the information in for the exam. What should I expect?</p>
<p>Can anyone give me any information on taking AP Psychology on FLVS? Is is easy? Are you able to retake quizzes/tests? Are the exams timed? Can you resubmit homework? I REALLY need an easy A to boost my GPA. I plan on taking and finishing this whole course over the summer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!! :)</p>
<p>I took AP Computer Science on FLVS and it is very easy to get an A, and it’s rather enjoyable as well, so you won’t get bored / stressed when working on the material. Furthermore, it provides excellent preparation for the AP Exam and I’m certain that you will receive no less than a 5.</p>
<p>My exam is in a week, do I have to pay for the exam guys??</p>
<p>Has anyone taken AP COMPUTER SCIENCE?
I’ve seen one review of it and that was from 2008. I was wondering if anyone has taken it recently in case it might has changed.</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether to take it. Students in my school have been struggling with finishing it and are extremely far behind to the point our school is limiting the students that can take it next year.</p>
<p>Not sure if it will be too much for me going into next year… Might pick up Java over the summer to get an edge if I do take it. </p>
<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>I’m sorry to go a little off topic but I was wondering about electives as far as my 11th grade schedule. Haven’t been able to find a decent thread as far as electives. </p>
<p>Forensic Science: Easy, hard, time consuming, any info?
Personal and Family Finance?
Voluntary Public Service: What do you even do in this course?
Social Media: Time consuming, easy?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>How did you guys do on the AP exam? just wondering :)</p>
<p>As of now, I’ve taken 4 FLVS ap classes: macro, psych, micro, and compsci and I have gotten 5s on all of them. If you are willing to push yourself, FLVS is really great. Given the amount of time needed to sit in a classroom, FLVS saves a crapload of time on easy aps. </p>
<p>Of the courses I took, I believe that FLVS prepared the best for compsci, psych, macro, and then micro respectively. </p>
<p>If any of you are currently taking an FLVS course, you can actually access the lessons for other courses by clicking on “Lessons” then changing the “educator<em>XXXX</em>vY” near the end of the URL. For example, you would change it to educator<em>apcsa</em>v14 to look at the AP Computer Science A lessons, educator<em>apcalcbc</em>v14 for AP Calculus BC, educator<em>apbio</em>v13 for AP Biology, and so on. The workload along with the estimated amount of time that should be spent on the lessons and work is also found at the beginning of each module so this can really help you to decide if you want to take the course or not.</p>
<p>I’m debating about signing up for either AP Environmental Science or AP Computer Science A and I have a few questions.</p>
<p>Firstly, I need an easy A to boost my GPA. Obviously they aren’t going to necessarily be “easy” because they’re APs, but are you really allowed to redo assignments on FLVS until you get an A?</p>
<p>Secondly, from what I’ve heard so far, AP Environmental Science is a nightmare on FLVS. I have an insane AP teachers and an anal sports coach, so if the workload is as unreasonable as people say it is, I would rather just skip it. However, I have had absolutely no experience in computer programming and am just an “okay” math student (I’m great with figuring out languages though, if that accounts for anything). Lots of people are saying it’s easy on FLVS, but is this just because you’re all great math students/critical thinkers? If I’m just an average math student, would I be able to get an A in APCS?</p>
<p>what prep books did you guys use for AP micro?</p>
<p>To people asking about AP Computer Science, here are my opinions. I took it this year and got a 5. For one, the class is pretty darn easy to get an A in. You can resubmit all programming based assignments (which are about 90% of the assignments). The tests are generally easy to moderate (and fair). The AP test is really easy - you don’t even really have to do all of the optionary prep work that they say you have to do (eIMACS).</p>
<p>The one caveat: IT IS A LONG COURSE. Each programming assignment is 2-4 hours long, and you have to do about 3-4 of them a week to finish the course in a year. Unless you have ~8 hours to spare a week I would think twice before enrolling for this course if your expectation is to finish it in a year. Overall, it’s an enjoyable, enriching, and quality class that is definitely worth taking if you have the time.</p>
<p>Hey guys I signed up for AP Human Geography and I read through this thread but how many assignments were there total?</p>
<p>Also how many assignments are there for AP Statistics on FLVS? </p>
<p>Okay, freshfaced to this website, actually joined because I found this thread, but I am a forever ‘homeschooled’ student (transferred to mostly FLVS around middle-school) and started AP courses with them last school year, which would be 2013-2014 or fall of my sophomore year.
Last year I took APUSH (US History), which allows for the common phrase seen among students “APUSH? More like APUSH me off a cliff”. I also took AP English Language. I had Mr. Carson for APUSH and Ms. Boeckle for Lang</p>
<p>This will be in 2 because apparently I type too much.</p>
<p>AP US History
Coursework: Mostly busywork as far as assignments go
Reading: Lots of it
Teacher: Probably had ADD or ADHD, everytime we had to do a DBA he would get off topic and start ranting about the Huffington Post and political cartoons and barely even ask me any questions. I had a lady with a long list (5 pages) of instructions she emailed out such as revise in red, only submit .rtf, call me between 3-4pm only, etc, who randomly left a month into the course, which is when I got Carson. One more not on Carson, he forgets if you’re on vacation. I did plenty of traveling in the fall, and he always approved it because I was ahead of pace, but he always managed to forget about it too. The teacher switched happened while I was on vacation in Alaska, which should have been noted somewhere whenever he had the course controls handed to him, but he still called me 5 times and was upset when I finally called him back. He also texted me multiple times during another vacation asking why I wasn’t submitting anything despite the fact I’d told him I was leaving 3 times (2 weeks ahead, 1 week ahead, and a couple of days before as reminders)
Score on AP Test: 4
I’ll preface this by saying I’m interested in history, and particularly in US history. I’ve had the privilege to travel often, and whenever I was quite young most of that traveling was to places mentioned in this subject (ex. Boston, DC, Roanoke, Plymouth, national historic sites out west, etc). That being said, when I first started the course I almost died. The chapters are around 50 pages in the beginning, and they start out with some background information on Europe that I didn’t see on the AP test at all. Once you start getting past the, imo, more boring sections and into parts of history that are well known such as the revolution or the civil war, it does get kind of interesting, and I think at one point I even read a chapter that was only 28 pages long! I was so excited by that. You have to read the chapters at the beginning of each module, as they do not tell you which pages in the chapters go with each specific lesson. The review sheets they provide for these chapters are helpful, but some of the definitions/questions they ask on them are not covered in the chapters themselves, which was beyond annoying. That being said the review sheets aren’t assignments, you don’t have to submit them, they’re only for your own benefit, so I guess since it’s considered optional, they don’t revise them often. I would definitely recommend filling them out, though. I had a friend who took APUSH online as well, and she refrained from reading most chapters or even googling the terms on the reviews, she studied for the AP test, however she still got a 1.
The lessons themselves tended to be somewhat short, the assignments typically essays. What I found for a lot of assignments was they wanted you to write an introductory paragraph and provide the outline for the rest, which, while shorter than writing an essay, goes against the way I tend to write mine, so I wasn’t super fond of that. Sometimes they wanted you to analyze a political cartoon, saying that there would be a few on the AP test, there were none, but I still enjoyed the cartoons. There was some photography lesson as well, I think it was during the Civil War period? Basically just pick any form of historical documentation and stick the word “analyze” behind it and that was a normal assessment.
They definitely stressed DBQ’s, which I personally enjoyed as I like research projects more than typical essays, the specific pieces of evidence keep me from going off track (as I’m finding myself doing in this review, my apologies). I received marks of 100 on most of my homework, my suspicions are they’re mainly grading for completion, as long as you don’t typ w/o vowls nd u$e symblzzz or write sentences that lack logic or make no grammatical sense, you should be fine.
The exams…those got me. The multiple choice tests I found quite difficult, as I felt that they used the most obscure information in the chapters for these tests. For example, there would be 3 pages outlining everything about the Boston Tea Party, was there a single question about the tea party on that module test? No, instead there were 3 or 4 questions about topics that had been mentioned in passing. Don’t rush through these tests, the time given is plenty (though I do tend to finish timed tests before time is called, so maybe I’m biased, I’m not sure). The segment exam in segment 1 was all material up to that point, in segment 2 it was the whole course as opposed to only the materials in segment 2. The multiple choice part of the test was separate from the FRQ and DBQ. I can’t recall if there was 1 FRQ or if they had 2, but I do remember being able to choose a topic out of two or three topics on one of the tests. The DBQ is easy to do well on as long as you use 3/4 of the sources (all are preferred) acknowledge the opposing argument and refute it, and bonus points for outside information.
I found the APUSH AP exam to be easy as well. I finished the multiple choice (both filling in bubbles and checking my answers) with 15 or 20 minutes to spare, and wrote my essays up until the last 3 minutes taking up probably 12 pages in the essay book total. I found this class very interesting, and I learned a lot of things that I thought I already knew were actually mistaken.</p>