how many highschoolers take Virtual Virginia AP courses?
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Anonymous
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Friends of ours have a rising 9th grader in VA. He's spending his summer taking PE and Personal Finance so that come fall he can start loading up on AP courses.
Not many are offered at our local school, but Virtual Virginia has a full program of AP courses. So this kid is loading up on courses like "AP Macroeconomics", "AP Microeconomics" etc. My question is: how common is this? Is it expected to fill one's schedule with virtual AP courses starting 9th grade? |
Anonymous
| Not common at all in my experience. However, our high school offers many AP classes. Is the student doing this in addition to a regular course load? |
Anonymous
From my understanding it's part of their regular course load. I'd be curious if there are restrictions on course load/overload the way you might find at a 4 year college or university. Another kid (senior) claims on their public LinkedIn resume to graduate with an Associate Degree in Computer Science from highschool, something that requires around 60 college credits (20 semester long courses), including a series of 5 or 6 CS courses. These would be lower division courses at a 4 year school, many if not all of which fall under Virginia's transfer program. Along with lots of AP/DE courses on English, History, etc. How exactly does this work? |
Anonymous
Research dual enrollment classes in APS. It is entirely possible, especially if there is a kid who is super motivated and /or who attends Arlington Tech. There are multiple DE classes offered at the upper grades that will help kids get a lot of basic classes done before university, esp if they intend to go in State for VA. That is my understanding, others may have more experience in this. |
Anonymous
| You can also take summer classes at nova without a highschool diploma. |
Anonymous
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I think it is pretty common to take a course over the summer. Both of my kids did it in high school (Econ & Personal Finance).
I know many others who do as well. PE is pretty popular. My kids did it to free up more time in their schedule. In there case, it wasn't for an AP class. One wanted a free block and the other wanted to take an additional class. |
Anonymous
If they begin full time dual enrollment in 9th, they could hypothetically have up to 120 credits (15 per semester) |
Anonymous
Hypothetically here is the keyword? 15 per semester would be 5 courses, which is one more than a typical 4 double period block schedule would give. So that's "overload." In addition, at least some DE/AP courses have prerequisites in our school district at least - for instance, Biology I and Chemistry I are prerequisites for any DE/AP course in biology/chemistry - these would take up a slot in 9th grade; then there is the sequential elective requirements in Virginia, and all AP courses in history except APUSH require a prerequisite history course that's not offered at the middle school level. (I am assuming a student comes in fully accelerated into HS - has taken accelerated science, has taken an Earth Science credit in MS, and has completed math up to including Algebra II in middle school). And it's not even clear how a world language would fit in. Looking at say NVCC's requirements (to pick an example of a Virginia CC) these are: - CSC 221, CSC 222, CSC 223, CSC 205, and CSC 215 - those are 5 (if taught properly, time-consuming and tough) CS courses - Precalc, Calculus I, II, III, Discrete Math - that's 5 math courses. - plus 5 electives - plus 2 English AP level courses. (actually, it says CSC 205 OR 215 OR Calculus III - which doesn't seem right; but that may make it more doable.) |