AP Courseload?

[anonymous78]

How many AP courses should DD take if she wants to go to a good college (but not Ivy)?

[Anonymous]

No way to answer this without knowing how you define good, how strong a student she is and what school she attends. What does her college counselor suggest?

In the DMV 6 over the course of high school seems typical with some students doing more and others doing less.

My kid plans on doing 10 - which I think is about 2 too many for him.

[Anonymous]

Well that depends. Can she handle them or will too many be too much work and ultimately lower her GPA? Can she pass the AP exams for each course she plans to take? Two per year seems like a good number to start with and maybe see if she could handle adding in more once she sees how she does with that.

[Anonymous]

She might want to consider taking some of her required non-academic classes (like health, speech, etc-- whatever is required in your district) during summer school or online so it frees up some space in her schedule for APs.

She can also self-study for a few of the exams and just take the exam instead of the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She might want to consider taking some of her required non-academic classes (like health, speech, etc-- whatever is required in your district) during summer school or online so it frees up some space in her schedule for APs.

She can also self-study for a few of the exams and just take the exam instead of the class.

This would have killed my son. Summer is for refresh and on-line during the year? That just means overloading.

He will take 4 AP or IB his junior year, including calc and physics.

You do know all AP classes aren't the same???

.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She might want to consider taking some of her required non-academic classes (like health, speech, etc-- whatever is required in your district) during summer school or online so it frees up some space in her schedule for APs.

She can also self-study for a few of the exams and just take the exam instead of the class.

This would have killed my son. Summer is for refresh and on-line during the year? That just means overloading.

He will take 4 AP or IB his junior year, including calc and physics.

You do know all AP classes aren't the same???

.

I'm the PP above. Students definitely shouldn't overload on coursework if they feel like it would be detrimental to their mental health! Life is too short and high school is too long to stress out about it.

[Anonymous]

argh - My kid has one teacher who thinks that AP should include many, many independent projects. My kid is getting killed by weekly posters that are non-substantive busy work requiring hours and hours of effort. When I talked to the teacher, she falls back on the line that this is an AP level course and supposed to be harder. I told her that I had never had a class in college with posters. I would understand if there was additional reading or writing assignments, but this busy work is crushing my kid because it is so time consuming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:argh - My kid has one teacher who thinks that AP should include many, many independent projects. My kid is getting killed by weekly posters that are non-substantive busy work requiring hours and hours of effort. When I talked to the teacher, she falls back on the line that this is an AP level course and supposed to be harder. I told her that I had never had a class in college with posters. I would understand if there was additional reading or writing assignments, but this busy work is crushing my kid because it is so time consuming.

This 100%. I wish they would make AP courses like actual college classes and just have maybe a couple in class tests, a couple papers and a final.

[Anonymous]

That's how AP classes are at my kids school. Some parents complain that there aren't enough group projects/that it isn't creative enough.

Anyway so long as kids are prepared for the exam those things are up to the teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's how AP classes are at my kids school. Some parents complain that there aren't enough group projects/that it isn't creative enough.

Anyway so long as kids are prepared for the exam those things are up to the teachers.

In my experience it was so so much easier to just prepare for the test on my own by reading a textbook (or even just a prep book) and taking practice exams in the back of the prep book, rather than taking the actual class and doing all the silly projects. YMMV (probably way easier for the liberal arts/humanities exams. I def wouldn't have been able to teach myself calculus or chemistry).

Or if you can do dual enrollment at a community college instead, you'll probably have less of the busy work.

[Anonymous]

My kid has one teacher who thinks that AP should include many, many independent projects. My kid is getting killed by weekly posters that are non-substantive busy work requiring hours and hours of effort. When I talked to the teacher, she falls back on the line that this is an AP level course and supposed to be harder.

Mine had an APUSH teacher who wanted detailed notes from the readings (in a notebook), lengthy worksheets (from the same reading), and various charts filled out (from the same reading), when just the notes would have been plenty. My DD dropped the class after about three weeks of that nonsense and went on to actually enjoy her honors US History class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's how AP classes are at my kids school. Some parents complain that there aren't enough group projects/that it isn't creative enough.

Anyway so long as kids are prepared for the exam those things are up to the teachers.

I almost agree. Some teachers demand more than their share of time and do the kids a disservice when they leave no time over for anyone else's homework.

[Anonymous]

A strategy to consider is taking AP in areas where your child has an interest and that's it

So if they like humanities take AP English and history but don't worry about math and science as much

and vice versa if they seem like a STEM kid

by high school most kids know if they lean more towards humanities or STEM taking all AP is pretty ridiculous

[Anonymous]

UNC did research that showed no correlation with success in college beyond taking 5 AP classes. So they changed their policy to not give any additional weight to applicants taking more than 5 AP classes.

Google the research for better explanation than I can give.

I think 5 or 6 is plenty. 3 might be fine.... as long as you do WELL in them. It doesn't look as good to take 10 and only get 2's on the exams.

[Anonymous]

Do AP classes in subjects that are already of some interest. If that is 2 or 3 no problem. Much better to enjoy high school and participate in some other activities than load up on advanced classes. I should also add the student needs to do well in the class and test. So, don't sweat not taking AP chem if you did not like chem.