Is anyone else’s kid in the final push studying for their AP exams? Her high school doesn’t offer AP classes before junior year except computer science, which she has no interest in. So this is her first year taking these exams. They’re coming up soon! I am just trying to stay out of her way this weekend lol.
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Yes. We have AP Physics 1 & 2, AP English, AP history.
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Same here! D26 is head down this weekend in study mode. It’s also her first time taking AP exams and it seems like a LOT. The teachers have all been assigning various practices tests that have been time-consuming, but good actual practice to see what needs to be done.
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They do have a bus system at UAH. Route 3 goes through campus. And at the bottom there is a link to UAH Friday night routes that goes to Walmart, Target, and the mall.
My daughter doesn’t have a car and won’t next year. She has never used the bus, despite thinking it was important a year ago. Most things she buys on campus or Amazon. We’ve done Walmart delivery once and that was easy. She had a friend drop her at the airport in December and took an Uber in January. She plans to continue to live on campus so as to not need a car. She really dislikes driving. And at UAH she can live in a dorm the entire time, which was a plus to her. We’ll see if she continutes to want that!
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I don’t know what major, but have you looked at U of Louisville? The band is smaller at 200 or so. They have a NMF scholarship for $28,000, which is about tuition costs.
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I think it’s sctually in the 20’s, at least it was for my son. I think he had maybe a 27% chance somewhere and it was considered a target. FWIW, I thought CV seemed generous with their calculations. Out of 16 schools 4 of them were solid reaches for anyone but CV only listed 2 as reaches and put the other 2 as targets. CV listed his chances as higher than expected across the board. They were right- he got into all of his schools except for one- the hardest of the 2 reaches listed at 12% (actual acc rate is 5%).
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Yep, AP Microeconomics, AP Gov, AP Spanish, AP Chem, AP Lang. I’ve never seen her so focused.
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Yep! D26 has 3 the week of 5/5, 2 the week of 5/12, and 2 regular non-AP final exams the week of 5/12. This week at school is review week, so they’re not supposed to have new assignments for grades. There’s only 2 classes that she’s worried about, so she’s going to focus a lot on studying for those and both of those tests are during the 2nd week.
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Thanks for this info! Super helpful! 
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I was gone for a week and am still catching up on this thread! Lots of good topics.
Our list is getting there. We will try to visit a few places in the fall and will do the closer ones in the spring as part of admitted student day instead. I know we will be visiting Alabama. He’s been on campus to visit his brother, but I think he should have a full tour so we’ll go this fall. I think he should apply to U of SC and/or WVU, but those would take more effort to visit. I think he needs to look online more and see what he thinks.
With my older 2 we found waiting worked pretty well. Even though they both had a lot of acceptances, we started visiting and if something was pretty good, it let them eliminate other places that we either more expensive, harder to get to, didn’t have exactly the major, etc. And for my daughter her priorities really got tuned in the closer to May 1 we got.
So I think the list is:
Will apply -
U of Alabama
U of Michigan
Michigan State
Western Michigan
Maybe apply -
U of W. Virginia
U of S. Carolina
Tulsa
That’s probably it.
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No studying at all. My kids have never studied for AP exams and their teachers don’t push them to do so (although there is in-class review). We have always looked at AP testing as a low stakes. It has no impact on grades (for us) and students are not required to report them to colleges if they don’t want.
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Mine is taking APUSH and AP PreCalc. He hasn’t been studying for either but I think he will do some studying next week and next weekend. He has one test on 5/9 and another on 5/13. He took AP World last year so is familiar with the structure of AP history tests and he’s been prepping all year long with the tests and assignments in APUSH. I agree the stakes are somewhat low, but lately I’ve been wondering if they do more to substantiate mastery than just the grade alone and we should send them. We didn’t send any for D22 and maybe that was a mistake? She did have the AP Scholar with Distinction award so maybe that was enough.
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Our D has AP Bio, APUSH, and AP Lang this year. She is studying for the first two since there’s quite a bit of material (especially for APUSH) but she says she’s not bothering to study for Lang.
She had one AP class last year, AP Chem. Our HS limits APs.
At our HS, there is impact on grades (teachers will retroactively adjust students’ grades up or down based on AP score). I also think that AP scores have a bit more practical importance here in CA, because our state universities are test blind (don’t use SAT / ACT) but they do accept AP scores and may use them as part of holistic admission decisions.
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I hadn’t thought about the AP tests meaning more in CA. We are in CA too and didn’t use them at all in admissions for D22. I figured test blind was test blind. D22 was accepted to ucla and ucsb and rejected at Berkeley. Maybe if S26 gets good results we will submit them. He got a 4 in AP world last year (the only AP allowed for sophomores at his school).
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I feel jealous, for a lack of better word to express my feelings. S26 is not focused, concerned, or heads down at all for his 5 upcoming APs (3 classes: APUSH, AP Lang, AP Calc BC+ 2 self-study APs: AP Phy 1 and Comp Sci A). His next weekend will be busy with track meet and he knows it. I am at my wit’s end and can’t figure out how to encourage/make him take the exams seriously and not procrastinate to the very end. I showed him a couple of posts here to try to get him focused and his response was ‘I am probably smarter and don’t need to study/stress that much.’
I would greatly appreciate the thoughts from the community here on what a parent could do to get a ‘smart’ and overconfident, strong willed teenager to put in more effort, and how best to deal with their overconfidence and strong tendency to procrastinate? I feel like my painting a realistic picture (e.g., potentially missing out on 5s in AP exams, competitive admissions in UCs, etc.) doesn’t help as they have a history of strong academics (1560 Sat, all A’s in a competitive CA high school, 5’s in 3APs last year) that they push back with. S26 doesn’t seem to appreciate that parents were much more involved in the past (before junior year) to ensure he didn’t leave everything to the last minute while this year he’s largely been on his own (and on track to receive a couple of A- for the first time).
Maybe I can (and should) do nothing and let chips fall where they may and hope he learns from his experience or failure?
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I would normally suggest maintaining a bit of scaffolding at critical junctures but it sounds as if your son has plenty of room to allow for a little (relative, I emphasize) failure here, assuming that the AP scores are not impacting anything else like class grades.
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My D26 has AP Chem AP lang and AP pre -calc BC
D26 is busy coaching and volunteering this weekend so studying is not on her radar yet. If it is the same as the last two years she will do the review packets provided by the teachers and that is about it. She is a firm believer that if you have done what you need to do during the school year that you are already prepared for the exam. Our students grades in AP classes are not dependent upon the AP score. She legit drives me a little crazy with her lack of concern but until she does poorly I leave it alone! Now my S28 went into his first set of exam this winter and realized that he needs to do more. He has hopefully learned from this as we approach the end of the school year. Two very different kids
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This is your answer. And, frankly, he might not fail. (Things have worked out well for him so far.) But most likely it will eventually catch up with him.
My oldest was exactly like this. Super smart. No studying and banged out 5’s on AP exams and 1500+ on SAT in one sitting. His grades weren’t amazing because he rarely did homework (“it’s busy work, I understanding it already”) but he still managed to get by…
Anyway, it was a long and winding road with him (for a variety of reasons). In the end, it was a little failure that ended up making him a much better student, worker and, frankly, person.
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I wish mine were studying – she’s got two, Physics 1 and Calc AB – but she’s bogged down with an end-of-year project in Architecture and a research paper for English, so no studying is getting done. I guess that will be a next weekend problem, lol.
They’re doing lots of review in both classes, though. D26 didn’t pull up her grade a point in physics like she was hoping with the final in-class test, so she’s asking her teacher if she’ll consider giving them all a take-home quiz to earn extra points.
I will check it out – thank you!