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MD TOPS AGAIN
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Anonymous
| Is this something to be proud of? Maybe we should look at the state that FORCES the most kids to take AP classes. Betcha it would be MD! |
Anonymous
Signed, A Bitter Virginia Resident |
Anonymous
No, no, I live in MD. Just sick and tired of this craze. I went to Whitman here in MD, back then we were happy with one AP class a year, and that started in 11th grade, no sooner. We had a life. |
Anonymous
Appreciate the enthusiasm, but something rather sad about all this adv. placement stuff. It has been around a very long time and still is puzzling. If you have a really sound curriculum, you'd have Honors courses for high school that would satisfy the highest standards. What more does AP add but angst (and hubris, maybe). They are so common most admit folks must just greet them with the same shdder they greet the roster of how I have worked at thus and thus to relieve all the suffering of the world etc. etc.Isn't this a strange phenomenon. Let's say you get into a good university and are given credit and placement which means you skip the courses taught there --which, if it is as good as you think it is --is not good news nor very smart on your part. You could be depriving yourself of exposure to their way of writing, of reading, of whatever--but it is theirs and that is your community for the next 4 years (at least, hopefully at most).There is merit to AP say in language or possibly the sciences or math yet even in these latter. . . . The bottom line. . .if you are going to a good university, take everything THEY offer. The profs you may miss may be the very best, if this is indeed as good a place as you thiink. And enjoy high school --forget the veritable hazing of AP which was thought about originally by a lot of HS teachers who fancied themselves donnish profs. Time to let universities be universities and high schools be high schools and middle schools be middle schools and grade schools be grade schools. What's the rush? And, say, where the heck is it that young people learn fundamental skills for life that one finds in developmental psychology and intro to philosophic thought? It is not goig to happen when the beer is running freely and parents are in absentia. Gotta back down and redefine what is a good high school and what exactly are the first two years of university all about. We are overlapping to the point where they are in madhatter competition and neither doing a very good job at what was their original mission based on the age of their respective populations. Growing up too fast under unnecessary pressure (some call if academic hazing is no virtue)! |
Anonymous
ITA. Also, the universities are catching on, and many students do not get out of taking courses that they AP'ed in HS even with top scores on the exams. |
Anonymous
I completely agree. When my child first started high school I was drinking the AP kool aid. She has done well, but hates the classes - particularly the history classes - she finds them a sprint through history with no depth. I thought she was just whining because of the intensity of the work, but I started researching the outcome of AP kids readiness for college work. A lot of my reading has stated that these kids are often not any better prepared than kids who opted not to take AP classes. I am not pretty anti-AP. But she does still take a few AP classes, usually in subjects where she has exhausted all her other options. |
Anonymous
| At the elite university where I taught, AP courses were merely one attractive factor in admissions; the amount of credit incoming students received for AP courses was severely limited a few years ago. The result was that students were able to take higher level courses sooner ("advanced placement"), but they were still required to complete the same number of college courses IN COLLEGE. I think this is a positive development. The students were freed up to take more advanced courses sooner, but not free to simply skip out of college history, for example. |
Anonymous
Some 30 yesrs ago the college I attended (small) allowed one to take advanced courses with all my AP credits but not graduate earlier than 4 years. Others, that I declined admission gave college credit that allowed one to graduate in 3 years. The rationale was clear then... at least 4 years of tuition was a stable revenue stream for univerisities. In the competitive college landscape today, once accepted colleges will rarely let you interrupt that stable revenue stream by letting a capable student with 12 AP course credits (scores of 5) get too far in their course catalogue to graduate earlier than the allotted 4 years. It's all about money. |
Anonymous
| I found at my daughter's elite private school that the APs were more about bragging rights for the parents than anything else. People used to actually say..."we're" taking so and so APs. It was really sad and sick. My daughter took one or two a year and got into the top Ivy anyway. I think people are steering their kids into too muh of this AP stuff. They should allow their kids more time to pursue their passions. |