Reply to “Challenging” an AP exam (taking exam without having had the AP class)

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Reply to "“Challenging” an AP exam (taking exam without having had the AP class) — is this common and how realistic is it? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My high schooler is telling me that some students are challenging AP exams, which means they take a test without having taken the AP class. My understanding is this is happening with a handful of exams for which the school doesn’t offer that AP class, but students want to try to see if they can still score well on the exam.

Has anyone had a child do this? [/quote]

Almost all of the AP tests are easily crammable (to get a 5) if you have a smart kid that is good with memorizing things. Seriously, the AP curriculum needs to either be corrected or half of the courses/tests should be eliminated or renamed.[/quote]

Please don't believe this person. The hard APs (Chem, Bio, Physics C, both Calc, US History, World History, Government and others) need [b]months of intensive study[/b]. The AP Computer Science Principles has a project that's done before the day of the exam. The Art AP needs a portfolio, I believe. The number of APs that someone can just rapidly cram and do well on are few and far between. I'm going to say that they don't exist. The [b]average kid[/b] needs to study for all of them.
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Observe the above bolded words. If you don't know, you don't know. But months of intensive study? Kids take 2-4 of these "difficult" classes at the same time so do they need months-s-s-s of intensive study? If your kid is struggling like this, they shouldn't be taking the class. Or, as I suggested, the curriculum needs to be reformed or eliminated. If they just added a score of 6 to the test where only some small fraction could score, or made a bell curve out of scores 1-10 with normal standard deviations, then this wouldn't be a problem. However if 10-25% of kids can score a 5 (which only requires a 70% on the test), then yes, most of the tests are easily crammable. Or do you really think that so many kids are struggling to do well in school?[/quote]

PP you replied to. My son, now in college, took a dozen APs and my daughter is on her way to taking about 14. Yes, it takes months of intensive study to get a 5 on the hardest AP courses. As a matter of fact, I do know. I saw/see my kids study. You seem to be confusing "content difficulty" with "work". Depending on each student's intellectual propensities, some content might indeed be difficult to understand. But the work involved, even if the content is easy to grasp, will never be nil, or close to nil. Most AP exams do involve knowledge of the subject matter and memorization of same. That is WORK. You can't just wing it and you should stop spreading disinformation to that effect.

[/quote]

This is my last response to this because there's no point in continuing the argument. I thought my original comment included the population of kids where cramming is very possible, and it's not a small number. In the second, I thought I gave the reasons why. Now, wrt the number of AP tests that your kids took, its commendable they took so many. I always think more is better because the high school curriculum is so watered down.

The actual AP classes that kids take from a specific teacher at a particular school, and how much work is assigned, can't be argued because that's subjective. Its also the reason why some people do poor in the class and get a 5 and some others get a good grade in the class and get a 3.

However, it's not hard to get to a large number of AP classes/tests in some circumstances. For example, at our slightly above average school, it's pretty normal for at least half the kids to take 5 (plus a FL, so 6) of the hard AP classes (you originally listed as the hardest ones) as their regular sequence. To accelerate would mean to just take them a year or two earlier and do DE, take an elective AP class, or take a free block later. If you throw in any combination of Precalc, AB, Psych, the easy physics, CS principles, Stats, Human Geo, AA Studies, the Econs, another Bio/Chem/Physics C,  etc., you can easily get to double digits in number of AP tests at our school without adding that much more rigor (while increasing wGPA), although a few of those classes aren't offered but the test can be taken at another school. ymmv[/quote]

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