<p>What percentage of college freshmen repeat courses they had in high school?</p>
<p>The definition would be any of the following cases:</p>
<p>a. Student has to take remedial courses covering the same material as a high school course that s/he already completed. For example, a student has taken algebra 2, precalculus, and trigonometry in high school, but is placed in those same courses by math placement testing when entering college.</p>
<p>b. Student has AP, IB, or other college credit, and his/her college recommends using it to skip a freshman-level course, but the student retakes the course (in a regular version, not an honors or otherwise significantly different version).</p>
<p>c. Student with foreign language ability takes a lower level foreign language course than s/he would otherwise by placed into.</p>
<p>I don’t have a clue overall, but I’d bet the percentages are much higher in fields where overall GPA matters: pre-med for sure, maybe pre-law, maybe engineering where one might retake a class with an easy A to better focus on one’s other classes. It’s likely also higher in cases where someone needs to maintain a certain GPA to retain merit scholarship money or honors-program privileges.</p>
<p>Our school cautions against moving on to higher level in science and math based on HS AP scores, but I think it kind of depends on when you took it. If you had AP bio or AP chem in soph or junior year, skipping on to the next level might be to your disadvantage, especially if that puts you, for instance, straight into organic chem. But D2 did go straight to vector calc based on 5 on AP BC…of course she had it senior year so no down time.</p>
<p>My son did NOT want to repeat anything he had taken in High school. My husband encouraged him to, because sometimes you need the information from one class in a sequence to do well in another. Because my son had taken both AP physics tests and done well, he tried taking quantum physics as a first semester freshman, despite my recommendation not to (he was used to taking really ahard schedules in HS and doing fine). He wound up missing a couple of classes because of a serious medical issue, and wound up dropping the class.</p>
<p>Many schools discourage this (b)for math and science majors, routing particularly talented or well-prepared students into honors sections instead. I do think it is useful information to have, though, along with info about student SAT and ACT scores, especially if these classes are being graded on a curve. Students with similar SAT scores can have vastly different levels of preparation.</p>
<p>As for (a),many (most?) elite schools do not seem to accept students who have not taken pre-calc and do not offer remedial math, with the lowest level math offered assuming a prior mastery of pre-calc. </p>
<p>Language departments seem to do a much better job of sorting students into appropriate levels, and some even warn of harsh penalties for students who misrepresent their level of preparation to sneak into an intro class. (Imagine a student being dropped from a regular gen chem section because they could have gotten a B or better on the final without ever having taken the course - never going to happen!)</p>
<p>Note that situation b in #1 only refers to when the college recommends skipping (or allows but does not specifically recommend or caution against skipping), not when the college allows skipping but does not recommend it.</p>
<p>For examples, using this recommendation [Advanced</a> Placement (AP) Examinations | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley](<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/ap-exams]Advanced”>http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/ap-exams) , I would say that situation b in #1 only applies to Berkeley students who repeat a 5 on AP calculus AB or BC, not those who repeat a 3 or 4. Of course, other colleges may differ in their recommendations.</p>
<p>I think it depends on what the kid’s major is. My daughter will retake Calculus even though I fully expect she’ll score highly on the AP exam. She may take Physics during the summer at community college. If she does, she MAY take it again at University.</p>
<p>The calculus thing is the standard advice of the engineering school at her University.</p>
<p>She’ll have a lot of other credits (English, US History, Government, Economics, etc.) - and she will NOT retake those.</p>
<p>In science and math, i know kids who have repeated, kisa who wish they had repeated, and parents (based on their kids’s experiences) who advise parents and students to repeat under the following circumstances:</p>
<p>Kid takes an AP course, which translates into one semester of a two semester college sequence, both of which will need to be taken. For example, a kid takes Calc AB in high school, but will need more than that in college. Or kid takes AP Bio or Chem or Physics in HS, but will need to take more than those science classes in college. The kid should retake the math or science in college, particularly if the AP course is only one part of a college course sequence. </p>
<p>AP courses do not correspond exactly with college courses, so kids can find they are missing chunks of knowledge when they start with the second class sequence and find out that their AP class didn’t cover everything they need.</p>
<p>My daughter took a dual credit (high school and community college) anatomy/physiology course in high school. However the course was required for her major as an upper level course so she was required to retake it. </p>
<p>DS took music theory in high school but was required to take the course for two years on the college level.</p>
<p>I think this is more common than one would think.</p>
<p>In this case, a Texas A&M freshman would not really fall under situation b in #1, unless s/he starts in Math 151 (calculus 1) after a 4 or 5 on BC (or somehow fails the math placement test and has to start in Math 150 (precalculus)). However, the recommendation does seem to allow for some individual judgement.</p>
<p>So far my daughter (a freshman in college) has been lucky. Her college takes no AP credits, but she decided long ago that placement was much more important to her than credit.</p>
<p>She’s already taken a math placement test and will not take the standard 2nd semester freshman math class that would have been 100% repeat for her (it covered linear algebra and DEs).</p>
<p>There’s an option to take Materials Science instead of chemistry and she will do that as she’s already had AP Chemistry and Organic I & II (and BioChem).</p>
<p>The only thing that MIGHT be a repeat is a mandatory biology class. She’s had AP Biology, genetics, and biochemistry. I’m not sure what the mandatory biology class at her college covers.</p>
<p>Ucbalumnus, exactly. Credit can be taken if the scores are appropriate, but the recommendation is that if you have, for instance, credit for Calculus I and II, that you retake Calculus II. </p>
<p>The placement test is not really pass/fail - it determines the proper level of placement. For my daughter, I doubt it will really come into play. I am pretty sure it will place her at Calc. I or above. Even if it places her higher, she will start at Calc. I.</p>
<p>However, the original question was how many students repeat even when the college recommends going ahead, not students who repeat because the college recommends doing so.</p>