<p>does anyone know why this is?</p>
<p>I think strong academic schools know that many kids who come in with APs give the advisors problems about taking courses they believe they have mastered…but evidence shows they haven’t. I would ask why you are so worried…are you feeling cheated out of standing or you want to finish in three years? I personally don’t see the value because unless you cannot test out of an intro level course by placement exam…well you didn’t know it. I look at college as a time to take as much as I can…not to get out of as much as I can. Many folks believe that CB has oversold parents/students on the value of AP and that it is a cash cow for CB. I guess that would be my opinion.</p>
<p>Because, with the exception of things like math and science, which are very straightforward in material, no AP course matches up with an actual college course, so there is nothing to give credit for.</p>
<p>Also, no flaming please, AP exams aren’t very hard. Many students can get a 4/5 on a test without knowing *****. To say that AP courses are college-level courses in high school is a huge fallacy. An AP class is just a slightly more rigorous HS class. Stanford cannot possibly consider them equivalent.</p>
<p>It’s not that AP exams aren’t hard. The problem is the way they’re graded and that 5-point scale they use. First of all, there should be a much broader range of possible scores for the AP exams. Right now, on some exams, having a raw score of 65% (such as BC Calc) nets a 5, and 40% of all BC test-takers get a 5. It’s a difficult test, but the curve’s way too lenient. If they came up with a more accurate and broader scoring system, AP scores will be more meaningful.</p>
<p>AP exam grades depend on your teacher. I had a very boring AP Chem teacher one year and took the exam and got a 2. The next year I had a much better teacher who made sense and got a 4. It’s not easy and it’s not hard. It all depends on the teacher.</p>
<p>While AP tests represent the toughest HS curriculum offered (far outpacing IB), they are nothing like a university course.</p>
<p>Here’s the deal with AP courses. Part of the reason that AP classes exist is to allow disadvantaged students to complete work that would help them gain college credit, as a “leg up” into college. If you’ve already got half a year of college credit, it makes it that much easier for you to get in and to complete college. When the AP courses were first created, it was expected that students would take 1 or at most 2 a year. This whole “5 AP courses for 2 years of high school thing” just wasn’t envisioned. </p>
<p>The AP tests cover a specified curriculum. In order to succeed on the test, you have to have had exactly that curriculum, for most of the tests. Because of that, teachers don’t have a lot of flexibility in teaching AP subjects. Sadly, what this has meant is that some students get essentially “taught the test”, without learning the kinds of critical thinking and synthesis skills they actually <em>need</em> in college. </p>
<p>Additionally, some particularly rigorous schools have begun to see that students who AP classes just don’t get the same depth and experience of the material they would in a college class. Is an AP English course commensurate with a community college class? Probably. Is it commensurate with a year of Freshman seminars at Stanford or similar courses at other top schools? Well, eh. </p>
<p>More than that, though, for some schools, like Stanford, introductory coursework serves as a more general and organic orientation to the school and its vision and philosophy, as well as a time for a particular class to coalesce. When you have a larger and larger number of “competitive” students who have 8, 10, 12, 14 AP classes, you end up with more and more students who expect to AP-out of the very coursework that the school has created to build community. At Stanford, where the idea of building a cohesive, organic class for each incoming year seems to be important to the Admissions office, granting large amounts of AP credit undermines the very goals of admissions balance. </p>
<p>I think that you’re going to see, over time, more and more highly selective schools reducing the amount of AP credit. If the reason you’re taking AP classes is to get college credit, then those schools may not end up being good choices for you. On the other hand, if you’re taking AP classes because they represent the most challenging courses your school offers – and you want to demonstrate your willingness and ability to take on such coursework and excel – then they can be a good choice.</p>
<p>AP classes entirely depend on the teacher! AP Chem at my school is the worst AP we have, practically nobody passes it, while my AP US teacher has a doctorate and is the coolest person you’ll ever meet. No one has EVER gotten below a 3 on it in the 10 years she’s been teaching it. I have friends who’ve come back back from Stanford saying her class was harder and they learned more in it than any other history class they took. I totally agree the AP tests are too easy if you turn the classs into an actual “college level class.” I practically slept through the US Hist. AP and SAT II and came out with a 5 and 800.</p>
<p>Obviously, the level of tests need to be upped for them to accurately proclaim they’re testing you on college level ability. But then all the failing high school kids would stop paying for collegeboard tests, and where would the cash cow be then, lol?</p>
<p>Just wanna add a note: </p>
<p>AP exams do not “far outpace” IB tests. I took numerous tests in both programs and i can honestly say IB tests were much harder. That’s given the fact that I was in the IB classes too, not in APs!! Some specific examples of tests i took:</p>
<p>IB Math HL much harder than AP Calc BC
IB English HL harder than AP English
IB Econ SL as hard as AP Econ (i’m guessing HL would be much harder)
IB Comp Sci light years harder than AP Comp Sci</p>
<p>Paulhomework, I also have experience with both AP and IB. </p>
<p>IB English HL is NOT harder than AP English Literature.</p>
<p>AP Calc BC is a one-year course. IB Math HL is two years. One would naturally expect it to cover more material. </p>
<p>the IB sciences SL’s are jokes and you know it. The AP sciences are not. IB Biology HL covers in two years what AP does it one. </p>
<p>IB history is much easier to BS than a comparable AP history examination. I’ve done both. Not only that, but IB history doesn’t actually require you to know anything. </p>
<p>IB Econ SL may be “as hard” as AP Econ, but it certainly goes into less detail, judging by the way it’s taught at my school. </p>
<p>And in general, the IB SL’s are less rigorous and the projects only detract from the academics. </p>
<p>But that’s just me. I loved my AP classes.</p>
<p>I agree with Science SLs. But HL sciences are as hard, if not harder, than APs. Also, at my high school IB HL are one year courses, with the exception of Econ and English. Math HL is only one year. All sciences are one year. History is one year, etc. Maybe that’s why we had different experiences.</p>
<p>APs at my high school are more a measure of academic status than what you’re actually learning. I go to Stanford with 19 of my classmates from high school and almost all of us took AP Bio, AP Physics, BC Calc, AP English, and an AP language- many took psych, i took CS, several took econ… it was a sign that we were willing to work, and learn- because if you weren’t in one of those classes you were bored to tears (I didn’t take AP English, and I had a semester of elective drama/english that was wonderful, but the regular english semester was boring as all hell).</p>