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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are there any AP courses that require a research paper, with elements like cited references and conformance with a specific style guide?

I know we wrote several in my own AP English class eons ago, before it was split into Lang and Lit, but even then it wasn’t a requirement for the AP course—we did it because the school system’s curriculum dictated it. The College Board never saw them.

But even back then, we didn't write research papers in AP history classes, just memorized facts and drilled endlessly on how to tick all the boxes and hit all the keywords in our exam essays. Similarly, the AP history classes my kid took in 9th and 10th didn’t require anything close to what they wrote in IB history for the IA.

So are there any APs that *do* require something like a research paper, something that might prep them for their college coursework? Maybe AP Seminar? (Not sure I have that name right— it’s not offered at my kids’ school.)[/quote]

There is AP Capstone Diploma that consists of AP Seminar (1st year, where you learn how to research and analyze a topic, and AP Research (2nd year where you write a 4000-5000 word paper). You also need to pass four AP exams to get the Diploma. It seems to emulate the IB diploma framework with AP courses.

It’s not that rare, likely depends on the local schools, about 60k students take Seminar each year, and that’s roughly comparable with AP Computer Science A or the number of students taking the IB Diploma. A large fraction of students don’t seem to follow through, because only 25k students take AP Research, still a significant number.

College credit wise, as an example, MIT gives 9 unrestricted credits to the AP Seminar and AP Research with scores of 5, but no credit to the IB Diploma.[/quote]

MIT currently gives the same 9 unrestricted credits to any Humanities HL IB course.

On the other hand I’m not really sure what the point of using AP/IB credits at MIT is— I guess it lets you graduate while taking fewer classes but I’m not sure that’s generally a good thing. [/quote]

You need to read more carefully. MIT gives 9 unrestricted credits to any Humanities and social science classes for IB HL and AP courses passed with maximum scores and they specifically include the AP Capstone courses. Not super important but IB Diploma work like extended essays doesn’t get any credit even when it’s fairly close to the AP content.

Most students use unrestricted credit to get out of general requirements, you still take a full load, but some people would rather take a stem class at MIT and use the credit to fulfill other degree requirements. [/quote]

So your argument literally was just comparing the extended essay to the AP class that was created to mimic the extended essay? That is dumb, not least because extended essay is barely considered a class for IB purposes (maybe it’s a half credit class?).  Not sure what “general requirements” you get out of either because AP doesn’t count for the hass distribution requirements. [/quote]

Somebody asked if there’s anything in AP comparable to the extended essay and it was worth mentioning that’s it’s possible to get college credit for that work and gave MIT as an example. Is MIT is dumb for giving credit for it? Doesn’t matter, they just do. Most schools don’t, a few ones do like CalStateSLO, UC Santa Cuz give some credit or a way to fulfill writing requirements. It’s mostly inconsequential, anyways.

MIT majors also have unrestricted electives that can use the AP credits including capstone.[/quote]

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