<p>Any kid smart enough to handle 15 AP classes is more than likely internally motivated, rather than seeking parental approval. Some kids simply discover they are good at taking APs and like to push their ability to the limits, maybe to hold the school record or to become their state’s AP scholar. It’s an adrenaline rush akin to getting top score on a video game.</p>
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<p>Mine, too: less weight given to homework and more to tests, plus a faster pace that helps the student focus more on the discussion rather than daydream while the class catches up to “the obvious.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the reliance on AP tests is a testament to our system of education to correctly address the needs of the gifted students. While the schools devote many resources to the other side of the spectrum, it is hardly concerned with the truly advanced student. After purging many through planned dropouts, the main concern is to base everything to the middle element and maintain the status quo.</p>
<p>The AP is, however, a poisoned pill as the course and curriculum are rarely at the level of a selective college. The outcome is that the AP program appeals to the best students but ignores that the level of the course and its scope will hardly be seen in college. Rote learning of a bazillion trivial elements is not a recipe for learning more important skills such as deep thinking and logic. It is obvious that the development of the AP relies mostly on lower level college and high school faculty, and the result is the mile-wide and one-inch deep curriculum. </p>
<p>It is also clear that the schools that have the wisdom and capability to give little attention to the Collebge Board juggernaut has done just that.</p>
<p>The program is popular mostly because we do not think our students deserve better. And they do!</p>
<p>If Reg classes < Honor < AP < college classes
and if you want to prep for college, don’t you want to try to get closer to its level rather than further away?</p>
<p>My kids go to a large city school. The school offers 20-30 AP classes. Additionally in VA if your school doesn’t offer an AP you can take it online through the state department of education. My son wants to take economics which he will need to do online.<br>
[Virtual</a> Virginia: Advanced Placement®](<a href=“http://www.virtualvirginia.org/apaudit/index.html]Virtual”>http://www.virtualvirginia.org/apaudit/index.html)</p>
<p>The school also offers IB but you must be selected for the program to take IB classes. </p>
<p>DD’13 is in IB. DS’16 will go the AP route. He is in AP GOV now and doing well. </p>
<p>Weighting: here AP adds .03 to your GPA, Senior level IB also adds .03, honors classes add .015 to the GPA. All pre-IB are honors level.</p>
<p>On a scale where there is a 1 point difference between an A and B, these increments are so small that I wonder if you really mean 0.3, 0.3, and 0.15 above.</p>
<p>Nope. These weights are added directly to the overall GPA. So if you have 20 honors classes (20 x .015) you get .3 added to the final GPA. My DD’13 has so many weighted classes she will end up with a full point added to her GPA by the end of senior year.</p>
<p>It was very confusing at first but I like it now. You get the same weight for the classes whether you get an A or a C.</p>
<p>Neither of my daughters high schools weighted. Colleges use unweighted grades don’t they?
They do like to see you take the most rigorous schedule, but that doesn’t always mean all AP/IB.</p>
<p>I think unweighted are more meaningful for colleges. The Val at the kids’ last year had a 4.9 GPA and this year’s Val will probably be just over 5.0 but I have seen some posts on CC with people having GPAs on a 6-7 point scale. </p>
<p>I think weighting is more a factor for class ranking.</p>
<p>I want to rant a minute.
Part of the pressure IMO is from the high schools themselves to enroll kids in AP classes in order to improve their ranking in news magazines.</p>
<p>The ranking doesn’t depend on test scores, just that you took the test. It doesn’t matter if it was AP Geography or Calculus BC, it counts.</p>
<p>My daughter took Marine Biology as a sophomore( they also offered genetics after bio) that her school offered instead of AP biology. The UW gives college credit for this class, but her district told the school it will no longer count as science credit only as an elective because they want the students to take more APs.</p>
<p>I see this as being driven by the rankings not what the students need or are interested in.</p>
<p>Typically, either a holistic look at the courses and grades, and/or a recalculated GPA using its own weighting method (if weighted).</p>
<p>However, colleges that use class rank indirectly use the high school’s weighting and GPA calculation to the extent that it determines class rank.</p>
<p>^^ glad our HS neither weights nor ranks. The school is very clear that there is no “reward” for APs other than your own desire to take a challenging course and perhaps college credit. it says as much on the profile that goes out with transcripts.</p>
<p>Our kids’ GPA calculation gives orchestra or art exactly the same weight as AP Calc BC. It’s up to colleges to recalculate if they want to.</p>
<p>Sylvan, we had the same issue at the public high school my daughter attended her first two years. No one at that school, a highly-regarded public high school, takes AP classes before junior year because all of them require the honors version first. And in one case, AP chemistry, students were required to take honors physics simultaneously. The brightest, most motivated kids at that school rarely end up with more than 7 or 8 APs. That is plenty, in my book. I’m floored by kids who can take 10 or 12 APs, as happens at the public high school in the town where we now reside. That just seems like a treadmill no one can get off.</p>
<p>One would expect that any of the APs which are relatively well accepted for college subject credit and placement are predominantly taken by seniors and perhaps a few juniors (with younger takers being rare prodigies) as the top level of an honors sequence (e.g. AP calculus as the top level of the high school’s honors math sequence, AP English as the top level of the high school’s honors English sequence).</p>
<p>Those routinely taken by non-prodigy freshmen and sophomores are rather likely to be the “AP lite” courses that are unlikely to get much, if any, college subject credit and placement. So 12+ AP courses likely includes a significant number of “AP lite” courses.</p>
<p>At the schools I have known, the AP course are indeed the top level honors courses. Few are offered freshman and sophomore years. But come Junior year, those in honors courses are pretty much tracked for AP in English, History, Science (if that’s your thing). Senior year is the same, with Calc and Foreigh Languages added to the array. THose kids who are even more accelerated will have taken those as Junior</p>
<p>I have a very good student right now who is not so interested in the maths and sciences, though he does well in them. He won’t take an AP Science though he 'll take the honors courses in the Holy Trilogy. The big quesiton would be whether to push it and have him take the math and foreign language over the summer so that he can take AP Calc AB as a junior and AP FL as well. The stats show that the school gets excellent results on the AP exams. Taking them early with the APUSH and the AP English Grammer would give him 4 AP tests on record as well as courses on the transcript when he starts his college process. From what I have seen, it does make a difference in highly selective college admissions for all their touting that it shouldn’t. He could then take a college course senior year first term along with the second AP ENglish and some AP history if he so pleases or an AP lite or whatever he danged well pleases.</p>
<p>Is it that big a deal to take AP calculus and foreign language as a junior instead of a senior?</p>
<p>When I went to high school, it was mostly seniors in these AP courses; juniors in these courses were rare. This was because calculus (BC only at the time) would only be reached by a student a year ahead of the normal sequence in math; a junior reaching calculus was considered a rare top student in math. For foreign languages, the AP course was the level 4 honors course, reached by seniors who started the language in high school or juniors who started the language in middle school. Those reaching it earlier were likely special cases like heritage speakers who started at higher than level 1.</p>
<p>The colleges do ask for the senior year schedule, so they will see that he is taking AP calculus and AP foreign language senior year. Of course, he has to complete the courses and do well enough in them to avoid getting any admission offers rescinded.</p>
<p>i know the girl mentioned in the article; she has a lot of friends and has a reputation for being kind and incredibly smart. Calling her an asian cliche is denigrating and unnecessary. Can’t we celebrate her for her own accomplishments?</p>
<p>Sigh. No one said she isn’t smart. No one commented on her character. I’m sure she is a lovely person. The subject of this thread is not her character, but the wisdom of her admissions strategy.</p>
<p>The point simply that her plan of attack for elite college admissions is probably misguided. According to the article, she spends her time being tutored in math and self-studying extra APs rather than participating in sports and ECs (and by ECs, I do not mean just school clubs, but intellectual pursuits beyond test-taking). This may be a misrepresentation of who she is and what she does. It would not be surprising: most articles of this type misrepresent the unfortunate souls who agree to be interviewed, because most of the time the writer has a conclusion in mind and the interviewees are used as stock figures to prove a predetermined point. In this article she is a stock figure: the Asian cliche.</p>
<p>She has great qualifications, and I’m sure that she will get into great schools. But if she is relying on self-studying APs as her ONLY means of “standing out,” as the article says, she may be making a mistake, depending on her target schools. Maybe she will have wonderful recommendations that emphasize her personal and intellectual qualities and do the trick and differentiate her from the pile of candidates with similar lists of APs and test scores. I certainly hope so, for her sake.</p>
<p>For STEM kids applying to highly competitive colleges, the value in taking AP calc and at least one of AP bio, chem or physics before senior year is having a complete year of grades, the test scores and potential for a fuller LoR from one or more of these teachers. But, if the hs doesn’t make this feasible, so be it.</p>
<p>lookingforward–we’ve been told that for STEM kids colleges like to see LOR’s from “off-subjects” like History or foreign languages. Their grades and test scores tell the schools what kind of student they are in their favorite classes.</p>