My kid (sophomore year) is trying to skip taking AP papers in social studies.
In sophomore year - selected honors world history class and not AP class
In junior year (next year) - selecting honors US history class instead of AP class.
I am not sure if this is fine or not.
I checked the graduation requirements and it does not mention anything about AP classes.
It just mentions that student should take 4 credits of social studies in high school.
Can you please let me know what is the long term result of this course selection which excludes AP social studies classes?
Most high schools don’t require AP level to graduate, but rather a certain number of courses in each subject. What matters in making the decision to take AP or not has to do with your child’s ability to successfully complete the course and AP exam. Also if your child already has some college plans and those schools place a high emphasis on course rigor for admission, then your child should be encouraged to take a high rigor course load. It is perfectly fine to take a mix of nonAP and AP level courses.
There is no requirement to take APs to graduate from high school. There are many students who take no APs. If your child is applying to selective colleges, you want the guidance counselor to be able to say they took the most rigorous schedule. What exactly this means in terms of APs will vary by high school.
My student’s guidance counselor does not respond back to emails.
When my student tries to reach her at school, she is never available in her office.
guidance counselor is not very helpful and did not even help with 4 year high school plan.
In our area, the students are encouraged to take the most rigorous curriculum that they can, because our high school rates each student’s transcript according to the rigor. Our high school happens to offer a lot of AP classes, so our top students take many AP courses. I would say look at some potential colleges that your student is interested in to see what the typical student enters having completed.
Take AP in the subjects that are the most interesting to you and balance the workload. If you plan to apply to highly selective colleges, you’ll want to have rigor, but it should also align with your interests. Don’t take an AP just because it’s there!
My daughter didn’t take the AP social studies classes in HS- she took honors. She decided that she was only going to take the AP classes that were of interest to her. The guidance counselor still checked “most rigorous” on the common app ( not impt to my daughter but I suppose it helped with the schools she applied to). The long term result - she got into excellent schools.
Aside from the AP class question @learning19 , I share your concern about the GC availability and responsiveness. Have other parents experienced problems getting information and help? Is it this particular GC or the department as a whole? Understanding what you can rely on from this person/department and what you can’t is important at this stage of the game - even if you don’t like the answer.
How does your kid generally do on state assessment tests? Has he got the sort of grades that suggest he might be ready for more challenge? My older son tried to get out of taking AP US history - but I knew he could get an A easily and also that if he did well on the exam he likely wouldn’t have to take a history gen ed course in college. No matter what he was going to have to take a US History course in high school. He listened to me and got out of a semester of history in college and got to take an elective he preferred. My younger son took AP World as a sophomore, APUSH as a junior and AP Euro as a senior doing well in all of them. He loves history so it made sense for him to take all the courses at the AP level.
Selective colleges won’t expect student to take every AP in the school, but if they offer APs they will expect students to take some of them and do well in them.
Is the college counseling office at your high school different than the guidance counseling office? You may want to visit the college counseling office for a review of her four year plan.
are you sure that your HS AP courses require "papers’? Our HS does not. Instead, they pracitce responses to DBQ’s. And, IMO, learning how to write pithy paragraphs is valuable for a budding college kid. (Eventually, such paragraphs string together and become a paper, which will be required in college.)
My D’s AP history courses required extensive reading and essays. She liked the challenge and opted for AP history classes and AP econ. She got some college credit out of it as well.
My son likes history, essay writing not so much, so he opted for regular classes versus AP.
Only this particular guidance counselor is not very helpful. Other ones seem very helpful to their respective students.
Our guidance counselor is assigned to us for 4 years and lot of other students have the similar experience with her.
If your kid is capable of taking the AP course and doing well then they should.
An AP course can be a good boost to your GPA and most colleges will give them credit for it so they don’t have to take it again in college. If you don’t like papers in HS you certainly won’t like them in college.
AP social studies teacher here (apush, AP euro, and AP world) one of the REALLY valuable things kids learn in AP history classes is persuasive essay writing- they types of prompts and grading criteria are very useful for college essays. AP English has that as well, but their focus is a bit different. And many schools save AP Eng Lang and Lit for junior/senior year, where kids can often start younger (sophomore) in history- which gives them time to work out methods for success, and score well in their upper class years.
It’s not necessary to have AP classes in everything. A strong students would like take AP English language and 4 to 7 more AP classes between sophomore, junior, and senior years combined, in subjects of predilection. Students shouldn’t take an AP class is their teacher doesn’t think they can reasonably get a B in it though. Having a combination of honors and AP classes is perfectly fine.
@toowonderful In your opinion, which is the most difficult AP history class?
and OP, if your child can handle the work, I would encourage him to try one unless he plans to take others in different subjects. I think it’s really about what you can handle. It’s a lot of work.
All of our history AP classes required writing research papers, not because the AP curriculum required it, but because a history course without a research paper is not a high school level course, much less a college level one.
They practiced DBQs too.
For my STEM kid the most difficult AP was APUSH, for my history kid it was AP Physics C.
@citymama9 - whichever one you take 1st… just the general learning curve. I think apush is the most clear cut - (1 country, and it’s the one you LIVE in) BUT, it is often the 1st one kids take, so it has a lower overall score. At my school, the kids score highest on ap world- but that is b/c it is the 3rd one they take- so they have it down.