S/O: How many APs are enough? Too much?

[Anonymous]

Public school kids are taking as many as 9-10 AP classes between sophomore and senior years. On one recent thread, someone said their DS had taken 11 APs. (For the sake of disclosure, DC1 will have taken 9 AP classes by graduation and DC2 has yet to enter HS. To fend off the inevitable accusations of sour grapes, because this is DCUM after all: so far DC1's results have been very good, grade-wise and test-wise.) I think we can all agree, this pretty much stinks for the kids, who are under a ton of pressure. The stress on my own DC has been enormous.

Some of the blame definitely lies with the US News/Jay Matthews ranking, which ranks schools by the number of APs/IBs the kids take. This probably causes schools to push AP classes on kids.

A second problem is that kids are hearing "we want to see you take the most challenging courses you can" from the colleges. We did a college tour last spring, and we heard this same message over and over from both the top and 2nd tier schools. Unfortunately, the "honors" classes in MoCo are more like the "on level" classes of 20 years ago, and a teacher chimed in on another thread to confirm this. The college admissions folks divide themselves up by regions so they know the top high schools in each region, and they know the difference between AP and honors at the MoCo publics. So basically, this means the kids take APs if they want to get into a competitive college.

But rather than just whine, what are some possible solutions?
1. Get US News to stop publishing the rankings. Fat chance, because the rankings sell magazines.
2. Get US News to weight the rankings by test results. Slightly better. Might slow schools down from pushing APs on kids who aren't ready.
3. Neither 1. nor 2. would stop the pressure that is coming from the colleges themselves to "take the most challenging classes." My personal favorite solution would be for MoCo to offer more challenging non-AP classes. Basically, MoCo's "honors" classes are really on-level classes. Public school kids tend to take many more APs than private school kids: you see this on DCUM threads all the time, and from our personal experience, DC's friends at Sidwell et cetera take far fewer APs, and Maret doesn't have APs. I wonder if the problem is that college admissions officers have more confidence in the "regular" classes at these private schools, but maybe I'm wrong. So, if MoCo offered "honors" classes that were challenging, would this lessen the pressure to take APs? Or not?

[Anonymous]

You seem to be assuming that APs are inherently bad. I don't necessarily think that they are. I have a kid in MCPS and one in private and while some of the AP classes are hard work, they aren't that different from the non AP equivalent at private school (which aren't always called APs but most of the kids take the AP test at the end so what's the difference). There is a bit of an element of test prep for a couple of weeks before the AP tests, but otherwise my kid has found the AP classes to be challenging classes with good teachers and engaged students. Pushing kids into APs for the sake of rankings is obviously not useful but so far mine has gotten 5s on the tests, and most of the kids at our school get 3s, 4s and 5s.

[Anonymous]

I guess I'm assuming that 8-11 APs is inherently bad, but fewer APs is OK. For some kids who aren't ready, even 1 AP is bad. I'm curious, how many APs is your MoCo kid taking?

The "badness", in my opinion, comes from a few things. First, the stress: so much is riding on a single test. Of course you aren't required to send in the AP test results, and you still have whatever grade is on your transcript. But many kids send in 5s with college applications (yes, DC will be doing this, at the school counselor's recommendation). So if you're applying to a competitive college and you took AP Calc but you aren't sending in the scores, well that raises questions. And if you send in that 3 or less, well it doesn't look too good....

Second source of "badness": some AP classes, like World History, are broad surveys that fail to delve into any particular issue or historical area. (Other APs, like AP Calc, actually seemed reasonable, although a lot harder than my Honors Calc back in the day. I can't compare with private high schools because DCs only went private for elementary school. But my impression is that a lot of private HS's have more latitude to deviate from the strict AP curriculum, because private school kids don't "need" as many APs. I could be wrong.

[Anonymous]

14:36 here. My MCPS kid will have 10 APs by graduation.

DC has not taken AP World (will this year) yet but my private school child took the non AP version of World and by its very nature it's a class that's a mile wide and an inch deep.

I guess it really depends on the kid. Mine is unstressed by the AP tests and MCPS, for better or worse, does seem to do a good job of test prep. I personally think the grades in the class are far more important than the test score in terms of college admissions. If you've got 5s that is probably a plus for college, but getting an A in the class but a 3 on the test is probably not a deal breaker, especially since the scores aren't always submitted as part of the application. And of course the scores for APs taken senior year have no impact on college admissions.

[Anonymous]

If your kid is getting an A in the class, but a 3 on the test, of course s/he's not stressed -- the grading is too easy and the AP label is meaningless! This is exactly why the Mathews index makes no sense; not to mention why MCPS is the emperor with no clothes.

[Anonymous]

Seems strange that Honors classes are easier than they were previously but when I went to public school roughly 20 years ago no one took more than 2 AP's a year and typically only 1 and then went on to the Ivy Schools or a well ranked local school. Where is the middle ground for children who want to focus well on several subjects in preparation for a decent but perhaps not top college instead of pulling their hair out trying to do everything just so so?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is getting an A in the class, but a 3 on the test, of course s/he's not stressed -- the grading is too easy and the AP label is meaningless! This is exactly why the Mathews index makes no sense; not to mention why MCPS is the emperor with no clothes.

I think most of us can agree that, for the kid who gets a 3 or less, that was 1 AP too many. Of course it's hard to have perfect foresight. And MoCo isn't the only school district to get sucked into the US News madness, not that that excuses pushing kids who aren't ready into AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems strange that Honors classes are easier than they were previously but when I went to public school roughly 20 years ago no one took more than 2 AP's a year and typically only 1 and then went on to the Ivy Schools or a well ranked local school. Where is the middle ground for children who want to focus well on several subjects in preparation for a decent but perhaps not top college instead of pulling their hair out trying to do everything just so so?

There is no middle ground in MoCo. My classical music geek DC has the choice of taking AP Music, which at DC's school has a reputation for making kids cry -- or nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is getting an A in the class, but a 3 on the test, of course s/he's not stressed -- the grading is too easy and the AP label is meaningless! This is exactly why the Mathews index makes no sense; not to mention why MCPS is the emperor with no clothes.

I think most of us can agree that, for the kid who gets a 3 or less, that was 1 AP too many. Of course it's hard to have perfect foresight. And MoCo isn't the only school district to get sucked into the US News madness, not that that excuses pushing kids who aren't ready into AP.

But my question stands: how does the kid get an A in the class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is getting an A in the class, but a 3 on the test, of course s/he's not stressed -- the grading is too easy and the AP label is meaningless! This is exactly why the Mathews index makes no sense; not to mention why MCPS is the emperor with no clothes.

I am the poster who said that and I guess I should clarify that my unstressed kid has only gotten 5s. But there are certainly kids who get 3s on the test and an A in the class. The class is a year long class with a mix of assignments. The test is a 2-3 hour block of time. Some kids don't test as well - but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't take AP classes. And a 3 is still passing.

[Anonymous]

I think kids who aren't stressed out are the exception, not the norm. There are plenty of kids who get 5s and are stressed out. My DC is one of them. And from what I hear, DC's friends have been pretty stressed out, although I don't know what their scores have been.

I wonder if this is somehow a public vs. private difference? Maybe something to do with stress conveyed by the teacher, or teacher quality, who knows. Or, could I ask, did 18:35's unstressed kid take 1-2 APs while my stressed kid took 4 this year?

Or maybe, as you said, it depends on the kid. Again, I think stress may be the norm not the exception, from what I hear from DC's classmates.

[Anonymous]

Are the kids stressed by the demands of the course itself and/or by the test? My perspective is as a parent of 3 kids who have moved from public to private for HS (and a 4th who will do so next year). I have wondered about the difference in number of AP classes offered by our kids' private v. those offered by the public high schools. While my kids and their classmates also take AP tests for classes not labeled AP (e.g., American history and literature), in general, they take far fewer AP tests than their friends who are in MoCo schools. Our kids' experience is that the workload is intense in most of their classes -- sometimes more so in non-AP classes than in the APs -- but that they are well-prepared for the tests and not stressed. For example, in American history and literature, which all 11th-graders take at their school, our oldest, who was a straight A student in those classes scored 5 on both, while the younger, who had Bs scored 4 on both (in calc and physics, where he was a straight A student he scored a 5 on each). I do think our kids' school works hard to make sure that admissions officers are familiar with the rigor of the coursework in the non-AP classes. Moreover, I think the admissions officers can see evidence of this themselves in the level of preparation of those students they admit. Our 2 oldest, who have gone on to college, were very well-prepared for an academically-demanding college workload.

[Anonymous]

From my perspective, stress comes from any or all of the following:

1. The test itself, because it seems to have become part of the college admissions process. Kids who get 5s tend to send them in, so if you don't get a 5, will the college wonder why you didn't send your score in? If nobody sent the scores in, it wouldn't matter so much, you just wouldn't have the option of skipping english 101. In other words, has the AP become yet another required test in addition to the SAT/ACT and SAT IIs?
2. More AP tests in public school. My public school kid took 4 APs this year - junior year - compared to a friend in Sidwell who took 1 or 2.
3. This may not be popular, but my kid is a girl and I tend to think girls stress out about schoolwork in general more than boys? At least comparing my own DD and DS.

Sure, the coursework was hard. But DC would have taken hard courses anyway, i.e. 20 years ago DC would have been in the honors class which was the "hard" class back then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my perspective, stress comes from any or all of the following:

1. The test itself, because it seems to have become part of the college admissions process. Kids who get 5s tend to send them in, so if you don't get a 5, will the college wonder why you didn't send your score in? If nobody sent the scores in, it wouldn't matter so much, you just wouldn't have the option of skipping english 101. In other words, has the AP become yet another required test in addition to the SAT/ACT and SAT IIs?
2. More AP tests in public school. My public school kid took 4 APs this year - junior year - compared to a friend in Sidwell who took 1 or 2.
3. This may not be popular, but my kid is a girl and I tend to think girls stress out about schoolwork in general more than boys? At least comparing my own DD and DS.

Sure, the coursework was hard. But DC would have taken hard courses anyway, i.e. 20 years ago DC would have been in the honors class which was the "hard" class back then.

I think your last point is important. I have a kid in public and had one in private, along with lots of friends in private, and I think the AP classes at MCPS are not really that different in workload throughout the year as the mix of AP/non APs the private school kids take. So for the majority of the year the workload is the same. The big difference is in April/May when it's test time. The private school kids do take fewer AP tests (maybe 5-6), although they also have to do more of the test prep themselves since it's not covered in class the way it is in MCPS.

Maybe your gender point is right too - my unstressed kid (who did take 4 last year but only 1 in 9th and 10th grades) is a boy.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP with kids who moved from MCPS to private for HS. They didn't do any additional prep outside of class for the AP tests, regardless of whether the class was labeled an AP or not. In fact, the 11th-grade lit and history teachers make a point of telling the kids that if they do well in the class, they'll do well on the AP test. I've only heard one exception to this -- the French exam.