GDS just dropped AP testing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh and for placement: I don’t see anything on Harvard’s website to suggest they use AP scores for placement. They seem to run a lot of their own placement exams.

Is every kid at GDS going to Harvard?

Lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t GDS want kids to do AP exams?
They are useful at most colleges for getting a bunch of credits. You can still graduate college in 4 years but it gives you the opportunity to skip ahead and take more interesting courses.
My kid is at USC and went straight to a 300 level Economics class because he had taken AP Micro and AP Macro Economics + AP Calculus BC. USC advised him to skip the intro Econ classes which most freshmen take.

+1

[Anonymous]

If essays are written by AI, GPAs hard to compare, testing downplayed, how are kids going to be compared?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t GDS want kids to do AP exams?
They are useful at most colleges for getting a bunch of credits. You can still graduate college in 4 years but it gives you the opportunity to skip ahead and take more interesting courses.
My kid is at USC and went straight to a 300 level Economics class because he had taken AP Micro and AP Macro Economics + AP Calculus BC. USC advised him to skip the intro Econ classes which most freshmen take.

+1

Many top colleges won't give credit for APs. However they will allow students to place out of some intro level classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t GDS want kids to do AP exams?
They are useful at most colleges for getting a bunch of credits. You can still graduate college in 4 years but it gives you the opportunity to skip ahead and take more interesting courses.
My kid is at USC and went straight to a 300 level Economics class because he had taken AP Micro and AP Macro Economics + AP Calculus BC. USC advised him to skip the intro Econ classes which most freshmen take.

+1

Many top colleges won't give credit for APs. However they will allow students to place out of some intro level classes.

This is not true…only Harvard won’t give credit. Every other college awards varying degrees of credit for different tests. Other Ivy schools generally give you credit for STEM and languages but few to none humanities.

Very few kids attending top schools use AP credits to graduate early…however they do use them to take a slightly easier schedule some semesters and of course to skip intro classes.

Top flagships accept many AP scores for credit…some kids can essentially start as a sophomore and graduate early if they would like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t GDS want kids to do AP exams?
They are useful at most colleges for getting a bunch of credits. You can still graduate college in 4 years but it gives you the opportunity to skip ahead and take more interesting courses.
My kid is at USC and went straight to a 300 level Economics class because he had taken AP Micro and AP Macro Economics + AP Calculus BC. USC advised him to skip the intro Econ classes which most freshmen take.

+1

Many top colleges won't give credit for APs. However they will allow students to place out of some intro level classes.

This is not true…only Harvard won’t give credit. Every other college awards varying degrees of credit for different tests. Other Ivy schools generally give you credit for STEM and languages but few to none humanities.

Very few kids attending top schools use AP credits to graduate early…however they do use them to take a slightly easier schedule some semesters and of course to skip intro classes.

Top flagships accept many AP scores for credit…some kids can essentially start as a sophomore and graduate early if they would like.

Every other university/ college? Actually, there are eight that don't offer credit.
https://thehighschooler.net/colleges-that-dont-accept-ap-credits/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t GDS want kids to do AP exams?
They are useful at most colleges for getting a bunch of credits. You can still graduate college in 4 years but it gives you the opportunity to skip ahead and take more interesting courses.
My kid is at USC and went straight to a 300 level Economics class because he had taken AP Micro and AP Macro Economics + AP Calculus BC. USC advised him to skip the intro Econ classes which most freshmen take.

+1

Many top colleges won't give credit for APs. However they will allow students to place out of some intro level classes.

This is not true…only Harvard won’t give credit. Every other college awards varying degrees of credit for different tests. Other Ivy schools generally give you credit for STEM and languages but few to none humanities.

Very few kids attending top schools use AP credits to graduate early…however they do use them to take a slightly easier schedule some semesters and of course to skip intro classes.

Top flagships accept many AP scores for credit…some kids can essentially start as a sophomore and graduate early if they would like.

Every other university/ college? Actually, there are eight that don't offer credit.
https://thehighschooler.net/colleges-that-dont-accept-ap-credits/

Ok…so you only have 3,992 schools remaining that offer credit including 5 Ivy schools, MIT, Stanford, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chapin has a whole page talking about why they don’t offer AP courses. They also include a list of some other private schools that have done the same:

New York City: Brearley; Berkeley Carroll; Dalton; Fieldston; Nightingale-Bamford; Packer Collegiate; Riverdale; Spence; St. Ann’s

Boarding Schools: Andover; Cate School; Choate; Exeter; Lawrenceville; St. George’s; St. Paul’s East Coast: Agnes Irwin; Beaver Country Day; Concord Academy; Lincoln School, Providence; Park School, Baltimore

West Coast: Crossroads; Lick Wilmerding; Marin Academy

my kid goes to one of the above - no AP classes, but kids can take the test. about half do.

We have one at Lawrenceville and another at St. Paul's. Both are sports kids but one will not play in college (so far) Please trust me when I say that these kids DO take AP tests and the DO get tutors, every single one of my kids friends and all the parents are not happy but yet, here we are still paying.

[Anonymous]

Tutors to get high grades or for the AP tests?

[Anonymous]

The College Board is a racket.

Diminished AP and SAT relevance.

Good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The College Board is a racket.

Diminished AP and SAT relevance.

Good.

GDS is a bigger racket. No academic integrity. Their academic curriculum in their course calendar literally said their "advanced" calculus course that replaced the previous AP BC calc course wouldn't get through integration and focus on differential calculus. Without national or at least open standards and exams their is no way to keep schools honest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So maybe just maybe the GDS kids were not doing consistently well enough on the AP exams to justify the school seeming to say you will be prepared for AP exams via our rigorous non-AP courses?

False. CC office published last year that a very high percent of GDS test taker scored 4+ in 2022. In fact the fact that they published this year after they said they were dropping AP courses and just keeping testing pissed off many parents. So inconsistent. They would downplay in October whether kids should even sign up and which kids should sign up for tests.

So instead of keeping testing and improving communication to parents but dropping advertising of the test results in their college profile, they dropped testing outright. So now the 10-15 Kids a year who apply to UK schools are scrambling

I know one parent who has called 18 schools in DMV and none will take outside kids for testing

And why would they? They paid the fees to have the courses and to be able to proctor the test. That cost was passed on to their students. Now GDS, a very expensive school, wants to get out of paying the fees, but still have their kids get the advantage of taking the test off the backs of people who paid for it at other schools?

I don't think you understand how the testing works. This is not IB. High schools don't pay the CB to offer AP classes (they do pay to offer Pre-AP because there is no financial benefit to the CB), and instead they receive a portion of each student's registration fee to pay for the administrative burden. Bringing in an outside student, if they have room, does not cost the school financially, as they will receive the same payment from that student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents should absolutely revolt against this decision. I mean how crazy do things have to get…?

Universities are increasingly not allowing AP exams to be used for even general credit. Harvard stopped it completely. Yale allows it on a very limited basis.

It’s definitely still a benefit at large state schools like Michigan.

I think these schools should still let kids sit for AP exams. Not doing so seems short-sighted. A kid who wants to go to Michigan should be able to take the AP Bio exam and test out of Bio195, for example.

Ivies are not all "universities." Most schools still give credit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So maybe just maybe the GDS kids were not doing consistently well enough on the AP exams to justify the school seeming to say you will be prepared for AP exams via our rigorous non-AP courses?

False. CC office published last year that a very high percent of GDS test taker scored 4+ in 2022. In fact the fact that they published this year after they said they were dropping AP courses and just keeping testing pissed off many parents. So inconsistent. They would downplay in October whether kids should even sign up and which kids should sign up for tests.

So instead of keeping testing and improving communication to parents but dropping advertising of the test results in their college profile, they dropped testing outright. So now the 10-15 Kids a year who apply to UK schools are scrambling

I know one parent who has called 18 schools in DMV and none will take outside kids for testing

And why would they? They paid the fees to have the courses and to be able to proctor the test. That cost was passed on to their students. Now GDS, a very expensive school, wants to get out of paying the fees, but still have their kids get the advantage of taking the test off the backs of people who paid for it at other schools?

I don't think you understand how the testing works. This is not IB. High schools don't pay the CB to offer AP classes (they do pay to offer Pre-AP because there is no financial benefit to the CB), and instead they receive a portion of each student's registration fee to pay for the administrative burden. Bringing in an outside student, if they have room, does not cost the school financially, as they will receive the same payment from that student.

The fees to offer the courses. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/start-expand-ap-program/start/consider-costs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So maybe just maybe the GDS kids were not doing consistently well enough on the AP exams to justify the school seeming to say you will be prepared for AP exams via our rigorous non-AP courses?

False. CC office published last year that a very high percent of GDS test taker scored 4+ in 2022. In fact the fact that they published this year after they said they were dropping AP courses and just keeping testing pissed off many parents. So inconsistent. They would downplay in October whether kids should even sign up and which kids should sign up for tests.

So instead of keeping testing and improving communication to parents but dropping advertising of the test results in their college profile, they dropped testing outright. So now the 10-15 Kids a year who apply to UK schools are scrambling

I know one parent who has called 18 schools in DMV and none will take outside kids for testing

And why would they? They paid the fees to have the courses and to be able to proctor the test. That cost was passed on to their students. Now GDS, a very expensive school, wants to get out of paying the fees, but still have their kids get the advantage of taking the test off the backs of people who paid for it at other schools?

I don't think you understand how the testing works. This is not IB. High schools don't pay the CB to offer AP classes (they do pay to offer Pre-AP because there is no financial benefit to the CB), and instead they receive a portion of each student's registration fee to pay for the administrative burden. Bringing in an outside student, if they have room, does not cost the school financially, as they will receive the same payment from that student.

The fees to offer the courses. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/start-expand-ap-program/start/consider-costs

The link describes the cost of starting an AP course, like teacher training and textbooks. Nothing to do with the marginal cost of allowing an outside student to sit the exam.