<p>I did mean graduate early from college.
eg. UT’s website allows a lot of AP credits but when we went on campus visit, the counselor said it’s not advisable to take some of them.</p>
<p>This goes back to my post #30. Since your daughter will not know what college she ends up at and every school is different in how they view AP credit there is no way to really know if taking AP tests and passing will help. It depends on the school and the major.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree - which is probably why I reserve the right to change my mind. This kid went back to ps to have easier academics, so my suggestion that he take the corresponding AP tests to prove his knowledge wasn’t met with joy from him. He doesn’t want to - and without doing extra outside of class to prepare for it, he wouldn’t get a good score anyway.</p>
<p>I might be likely to let him accept credit for courses outside his major, but not for those in it.</p>
<p>For middle son, I have no regrets with his starting over again in Calc. An easy course is beneficial freshman fall semester and if he stays pre-med the A will be helpful too. So far he agrees that boring can be good.</p>
<p>Can I get some advices from someone who’s been there.
My D has very good score on AP exams for Human Geo, US Hist, World Hist, Eng 3, Calc AB, Stat, Bio.
She is taking 5 more AP classes this year, Gov, Eng 4, Calc BC, Chem, Env Science.</p>
<p>She plans to major in Pharm, Chem Engr or Bio-Med engr.
Which classes do you think she should re-take in college? Which AP exams should she take this year. She does not want to take them all now that she will not get credits for some.</p>
<p>Take Government and English for sure.</p>
<p>One of my teacher friends said that statistically kids who actually SIT for the test, even if they don’t do well, perform better in the college “redo” than those who do not sit for the test. Don’t know where that came from - if it was just statistics collected at her hs, or what - but there it is.</p>
<p>Engineering. Use the AP credit for any history or English, any humanities. Will give her room for a minor or less intense schedule. Eng majors can take 18 credits a semester.</p>
<p>She should be fine in calc II, she will probably want to take chem over and most HS physics will not transfer to a STEM major.</p>
<p>I think a lot of classes would and should be repeated, unless really not interested. The way a college would teach it, if at a good college, you can get so much more out of it than a way it might have been taught in high school. You might get a lot out of it. </p>
<p>Now, if I were at a big anonymous state university where the classes were lecture classes, I would not repeat.</p>
<p>I do not know about general population of students, but many pre-meds repeat courses because they are either required or strongly recommended to do so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>fire123, unless your daughter already knows what college she will be attending at the time when she signs up for the AP exams, it is impossible to answer these questions. </p>
<p>One of my kids did know where she was going at that point, and it affected her choices of what AP exams to take. But most kids – unless they have been accepted ED or have definitely decided to attend an EA or rolling admissions school – are not in that position.</p>
<p>S1 took AP Calc. AB when he was a junior. Got a 4 on the exam. Decided to retake Calc.1 first sem. freshman yr. for a refresher for Calc.II. Was in a big auditorium class at big state u. The instructor was fr. India. S1 couldn’t understand most of what he said . The material he was teaching was nothing like what S1 had in AP Calc. S1 failed first and second test/quiz. </p>
<p>His advisor told him to drop the class since it would be silly to continue and get a low grade or even an F for a class that S1 already had (AP)credit for. So he dropped it and just went straight on to Calc.II in the Spring semester…made a B and was happy to be done w/Calc.</p>
<p>If kid does not want to take AP exam for whatever reason, then do not take exam. It will not make much diff. anyway. They will figure out very quickly what they have to re-take and what not. It largely depends on combo of HS/UG/major. Type of HS can make a big difference as some privates are teaching regular classes at higher level than others are teaching APs. Again, at some UG in certain programs they go thru AP material in couple weeks and then they move on in their lowest level of classes. You got to listen to college recommendations which might be different from UG to UG.</p>
<p>
D’s choices are UMich, then Purdue, UT Austin is her safety. She applied to several others but they are down her list.</p>
<p>
Would a certain score on the AP exams settle the uncertainty of level of difficulty of the classes in HS?</p>
<p>We don’t want her to have to wait to sign up to classes in college, then pass or fail to find out if it was worth the effort to re-take the classes. That defeats the purpose of taking the AP exams.</p>
<p>“Would a certain score on the AP exams settle the uncertainty of level of difficulty of the classes in HS?”
-No. But most colleges give different credits depending on AP exam grade. D. had to take one semester of English because she had only “4”. If she had a “5”, she did not have to take any. AP exams are not P/F. The best is to not calculate too closely. Do whatever you feel at the time. Sometime it just makes sense. For example, why not take AP exam, if they take SAT II in this subject already? Might as well. Different colleges on a kid list might treat the credit differently. And again, some programs require them to stay in UG for 4 years no matter what. My point is that taking AP exam is not as important as it might look now. Again, if you go for science oriented major, it makes whole lot of sense to get as much credits as possible for English, History, any humanity, Math. Then you can place in higher math (mostly determined by placement test score), possibly higher Chem (as it was in my D’s case). Also, strongly recommend to take as much Foreign language in HS as possible, AP or not is not that relelvant. Many colleges determine level based on placement test. The higher levels of Foreign language are much more worthwhile to take.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>After she decides her college, she should check what it advises (including the major departments). If she is still not sure, she should try the old final exams for the courses that may be skipped to check her knowledge against what the college teaches in those courses.</p>
<p>Courses which are not prerequisites to anything else should generally be skipped if allowed. An exception may be if the AP credit would only give free elective credit units (instead of fulfilling subject requirements), and the school has a credit unit cap that includes AP credit units and the student is not intending to graduate early or use the additional credit units to take lighter course loads.</p>
<p>Pre-med is a special case – if one skips pre-med courses, one typically must take an equivalent number of more advanced courses in the same subject (paying attention to lab requirements as well). The college’s pre-med advising should be able to help.</p>
<p>Fire, GenChem in college is much harder than the material that’s found on the AP Chem test. In fact, GenChem is often considered the first flunk-out class that gets many pre-med students to change their majors. My son took two semesters of GenChem (9 hours) at the local university via dual enrollment and 6 months later took the Chem AP test. He found the questions on the AP exam trivial compared to the ones he had to answer in his college exams.</p>
<p>
My D has already taken 2 SAT II exams and she does not plan to take any more. According to research we’ve done, extra ones do not help.
I keep this in mind.</p>
<p>Thanks Ucbalumnus and LoremIpsum.</p>
<p>There can be one other reason to take an AP test even if not looking for credit. At S2’s college there’s an intro Bio course that is only offered to those who scored a 5 on AP Bio - no exceptions (used to be 4 or 5, but was 5 this year). We opted to skip the AP Bio test since we saw no need for it (Possible Pre-med and wouldn’t have accepted credit anyway). I had no idea at the time that it could be the pre-req for an intro Bio class. He would have enjoyed the class…</p>
<p>It’s not all bad. He has a high, high A in the class he is taking right now (highest grade on the test) and that’s good for pre-med, but I still feel guilty that he couldn’t take the other class due to my advice (that I thought was sound at the time).</p>
<p>I don’t know if any other colleges tie an intro class to an AP score, but there’s at least one that does.</p>
<p>There is material in the class he is taking that was not AP material. Many kids in his class scored high on the AP test. It is not just a repeat class (which I’m happy about as is he). </p>
<p>Ditto that last part for Chem.</p>
<p>Calc seems similar so far, but it’s just the first few weeks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps the course in question is an honors course?</p>