What's the typical HS practice for taking APs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know no one who is taking 6 APs both junior and senior year. They’d just be taking APs for the sake of taking APs. Even with 30 APs offered, it’s not logical without just being a grinder.

Not true- my DC is a senior, and not even in the group trying for ivies, and they took these APs in 11th grade: english lang, world history, bc calc, chinese, bio, and psych; and in grade 12: micro/macro, stat, MV, english lit, human geo, physics.

Filling schedule with classes like Human Geo just to take another AP. It’s transparent.

What else should a kid take who is interested in exploring that subject?

What about psych and econ? Those their passion, too?

[Anonymous]

My kid’s math teacher is apoplectic about AP Pre Calc - it is not a college class. College-bound students should have taken pre-calculus, at a minimum, during high school.

My kid’s HS says 3 APs TOTAL is average on college profile, though anecdotally his friends all have several more. My kid has 6 classes and has taken/will take 7 exams. All 5s on the exams so far. He applied to top 20 school ED (not Ivy).

Although, once he knows where he is going, he will confirm the college accepts AP credit. His ED does (gets you out of core requirements). But, if he ends up elsewhere and they don’t accept, he isn’t going to sit for spring AP exams.

[Anonymous]

Our APS doesn't offer AP to freshman and that makes sense. It's beyond ridiculous to be offering college classes to 15 year olds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our APS doesn't offer AP to freshman and that makes sense. It's beyond ridiculous to be offering college classes to 15 year olds.

Oops. I mean 14 year olds!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid’s math teacher is apoplectic about AP Pre Calc - it is not a college class. College-bound students should have taken pre-calculus, at a minimum, during high school.

My kid’s HS says 3 APs TOTAL is average on college profile, though anecdotally his friends all have several more. My kid has 6 classes and has taken/will take 7 exams. All 5s on the exams so far. He applied to top 20 school ED (not Ivy).

Although, once he knows where he is going, he will confirm the college accepts AP credit. His ED does (gets you out of core requirements). But, if he ends up elsewhere and they don’t accept, he isn’t going to sit for spring AP exams.

I think most colleges actually do teach precalc now, as a practical matter. Even T20s. Because they all use in-house placement tests (actually mostly ALEKS) and they can’t kick out a new freshman for failing the placement test.

But the other reason the College Board is doing it is because having AP Stats and not AP Precalc creates a counterproductive incentive for kids to take AP Stats instead of AP Precalc after Alg2. Also, this will allow kids who take Precalc as juniors to have a score available to submit to the “test blind” UC Schools.

[Anonymous]

1-2-4-5 is pretty standard at kids school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid’s math teacher is apoplectic about AP Pre Calc - it is not a college class. College-bound students should have taken pre-calculus, at a minimum, during high school.

My kid’s HS says 3 APs TOTAL is average on college profile, though anecdotally his friends all have several more. My kid has 6 classes and has taken/will take 7 exams. All 5s on the exams so far. He applied to top 20 school ED (not Ivy).

Although, once he knows where he is going, he will confirm the college accepts AP credit. His ED does (gets you out of core requirements). But, if he ends up elsewhere and they don’t accept, he isn’t going to sit for spring AP exams.

I think most colleges actually do teach precalc now, as a practical matter. Even T20s. Because they all use in-house placement tests (actually mostly ALEKS) and they can’t kick out a new freshman for failing the placement test.

But the other reason the College Board is doing it is because having AP Stats and not AP Precalc creates a counterproductive incentive for kids to take AP Stats instead of AP Precalc after Alg2. Also, this will allow kids who take Precalc as juniors to have a score available to submit to the “test blind” UC Schools.

Exactly - he is bemoaning how the educational system is failing kids - both that kids are doing poorly on placement tests once they get to college and also that people would forgo pre-calc in favor of an AP designation on Stats. And, why is the system so messed up that colleges are rewarding that behavior by admitting kids who have silly AP designations over students who took more advanced material. Stats is a worthwhile class but you should have gotten through Calc, in his opinion, to take it (you could argue get through Pre-Calc for same effect).

[Anonymous]

Our MCPS high school has an application program (was a competitive application process for this class) with a separate school profile. This group very roughly approximates the top 15% of the class at a high performing school. They average 6.8 APs in first three years and 10.36 by graduation. I don’t know whether they count the economics classes as 1 or 2. MV would not be counted. But I think this provides less anecdotal information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know no one who is taking 6 APs both junior and senior year. They’d just be taking APs for the sake of taking APs. Even with 30 APs offered, it’s not logical without just being a grinder.

My kids a senior, only on Top 20 application (and it's a total reach so she isn't too stressed about it). Her course load is:

9th - 1 AP
10th 2 APs
11th - 5 APs, 1 DE
12th - 6 APs, 1 DE

[Anonymous]

Private for advanced/honors students:

APs: none-1-3-4.

But, they have really rigorous Honors courses.

There isn't the number of AP course load like our public high school, but the rigor of our private is known to be much greater to Admissions Officers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid’s math teacher is apoplectic about AP Pre Calc - it is not a college class. College-bound students should have taken pre-calculus, at a minimum, during high school.

My kid’s HS says 3 APs TOTAL is average on college profile, though anecdotally his friends all have several more. My kid has 6 classes and has taken/will take 7 exams. All 5s on the exams so far. He applied to top 20 school ED (not Ivy).

Although, once he knows where he is going, he will confirm the college accepts AP credit. His ED does (gets you out of core requirements). But, if he ends up elsewhere and they don’t accept, he isn’t going to sit for spring AP exams.

My kids' HS offers a "dual enrollment" pre-calculus class. Neither of them cared about the credit from pre-calc and won't transfer it to college but it was an option that provides the weighted grade since the school gives the weighted grade for DE, AP, IB classes but not for honors classes. Both my kids took that and then AP Calculus AB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I've been seeing this a lot... Rigor rating= what is typical AP practice in your HS vs what your kid is taking

So how do we know what's typical?

We are in FCPS and from what I hear:

Freshmen are not allowed to take AP
Sophomores limited to one AP

then I don't know what Juniors and Seniors do

What's it like in your high school?

It isn’t always the number of APs, but the rigor of the APs. BC Calc, Physics C, Chemistry, Biology, One of the AP English is far different from AP Stats, AP Econ, AP Psych, AP Environmental Science and AP World History.

AP world and AP lit are two of the hardest classes at our mcps high school. vs everyone gets an A in ap calculus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I've been seeing this a lot... Rigor rating= what is typical AP practice in your HS vs what your kid is taking

So how do we know what's typical?

We are in FCPS and from what I hear:

Freshmen are not allowed to take AP
Sophomores limited to one AP

then I don't know what Juniors and Seniors do

What's it like in your high school?

It isn’t always the number of APs, but the rigor of the APs. BC Calc, Physics C, Chemistry, Biology, One of the AP English is far different from AP Stats, AP Econ, AP Psych, AP Environmental Science and AP World History.

AP world and AP lit are two of the hardest classes at our mcps high school. vs everyone gets an A in ap calculus.

How do kids do on the exams?

[Anonymous]

My TJHSST Class of 2020 kid had the following progression:

9th
None

10th
World History (TJ doesn't offer the class, but kid took the exam and got a 5)

11th
AP Calc AB
AP Spanish
AP Computer Science
AP US History

12th
AP English Language
AP Gov't
Oceanography Rsch Lab (post-AP)
Artificial Intelligence (Post-AP)
AP Calculus BC
Mobile and Web App Dev (post-AP)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My TJHSST Class of 2020 kid had the following progression:

9th
None

10th
World History (TJ doesn't offer the class, but kid took the exam and got a 5)

11th
AP Calc AB
AP Spanish
AP Computer Science
AP US History

12th

AP English Language
AP Gov't
Oceanography Rsch Lab (post-AP)
Artificial Intelligence (Post-AP)
AP Calculus BC
Mobile and Web App Dev (post-AP)

So interesting, I figured all TJ kids took AP Physics C, AP Bio and AP Chem. Do they take those classes before TJ maybe? And also, no 4th year of language?