<p>I will be meeting with the school’s only college counselor in March. My first question for her is; How many AP’s at our school does a student need to take for you to check the “took the most rigorous courses” box? Our school has no limit (for Juniors and Seniors) and I have heard of some kids taking 6 or 7 a year (at the same time…no block scheduling).</p>
<p>seiclan, I asked D1’s college counselor if D1 would be dinged if her schedule was not 100% AP’s. The counselor said that no, it wouldn’t be. Then she said that counselors are given the option to provide a profile of each student instead of just checking off one of the most demanding/very demanding/etc boxes, and that therefore the school does those evaluations instead. But now, having for the first time taken a look at the SSR on the common app, I don’t see any type of either/or option. I’ll have to inquire further what she meant.</p>
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<p>It is indeed not a great a solution. The current porblem --and it is a huge one-- can only be solved by the same people who allowed the AP program to spin out of control. And those people are unfortunately the exact same who are the “owners” of the College Board, namely the colleges and universities. </p>
<p>What needs to be done is to DRASTICALLY curb the marketing of the AP as a substitute for college classes and place restrictions of the use of credits. The Advanced Placement Test were never designed to be used for admissions purposes and were not designed to reduce the experience of students in college. </p>
<p>Colleges and universities pretend NOT to have the power to make changes. That is lie … all they need to do is to stop rewarding the multiples APs by limiting their credits to a reasonable number (1 to 2) and limit the number of scores a student can submit to 4. </p>
<p>The current system is a joke, and a sick joke played on students who are robbed of not only an enjoyable high school but also an enjoyable college career. If is time for a high school to be a high school and for colleges to be colleges.</p>
<p>As Ben Jones (in Token’s linked blog entry and in post 49 in this thread) said so aptly, “Because if we don’t, who will?” Too bad that the people who employed him did not hesitate to lie about their WILL to implement policies and only yapped about them.</p>
<p>My younger son, a senior, decided to take seven AP courses (plus a leadership course) this year. His parents and his counselor tried to convince him to take six, but he was concerned he would be “bored” in any of the non-AP courses available to him. As it turns out, he’s bored with his AP Environmental Science course, which is the one his counselor tried to convince him not to take. His proposed solution? Drop Envi Sci, and not replace it. We’ll see what his ED college thinks…</p>
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<p>This is it in a nutshell - each highschool defines most rigorous differently within the context of the school’s course offerings. At my kids’ school it is full IB diploma or a combination of 7 AP classes or IB certificates. I’m sure that more than half the class gets most rigorous since 1/3 takes full IB and many kids take 3-4 APs per year.</p>
<p>xiggi:</p>
<p>I concur with your post #143. This is, in military terms, an arms race, pure and simple. A detente is needed, and quickly. My S is a math/science guy and has not derived much enjoyment out of AP social sciences classes. Besides the detente you mentioned, I’d like to see more intermediary, honors level classes. This would have been the perfect solution for my S, who is now debating whether he wants to take the AP English Lit class next year as a Sr. He kind of likes writing, especially rhetoric, but the idea of English Lit leaves him cold. I did have to give him the reality check that even if he decides not to take Ap English Lit, he’s not going to get by Sr year without some kind of lit, even if its mythology, or sci fi or something else.</p>
<p>And he will survive.</p>
<p>APfreak, what school did you get into?</p>
<p>APfreak’s last post was in 2007. Apparently he went to Yale.</p>