Reply to How is the elimination of APs going for your DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our private offers AP and I am of mixed opinion about them. Prior to taking an AP history course she took a regular course at the same school and honestly found the non AP course more challenging and intellectually stimulating than the AP course which really focused on maximizing the AP score. A lot more factual content was covered in AP, but the essays were more challenging in the regular class because writing style and good research was emphasized more in the non-AP class.

But on the other hand I”m still glad our school offers them because they are rigorous enough as college preparatory classes and we don’t have to worry that college admissions will wonder at the lack of APs. DC may be applying to UK schools and 5s on certain AP scores are required. So it”s nice to have the curriculum covered in class so that DC doesn’t have to spend time outside of class self studying for them and can have more time for extracurriculars/free time. [/quote]

Exactly.  Research and writing are the backbone of college-level history.  The AP classes will give students a good factual base and minimal analytical skills, but nothing like a good college course with a strong lecturer.  The only whole book AP kids will read is the AP textbook.

College history is, of course, absolutely nothing like that.[/quote]

Our kid's AP history courses required a lot of research and writing, so I guess it depends on how the teacher approaches the subject. I actually felt they under-emphasized maximizing the test results and would have appreciated a bit more focus on that.

Also, of course AP isn't the same a college history class. It isn't meant to be. It's meant to get you out of the intro survey courses with 500 freshman.[/quote]

Did they research beyond a few primary documents and the AP textbook? Did they read any full histories from well-known historians and write about the differences in historical interpretation between them? Did they study validity of historical evidence? Did they write beyond short answers and DBQs? Great for them if the course offered any of that.

I'm glad they enjoyed the AP history classes, but what they are now (most of the time in most schools) is nothing like the intro history courses I took at an Ivy long ago.[/quote]

The intro history courses at Ivies are nothing like the intro history courses you took long ago either.[/quote]

Quite true now that I looked it up.  The History courses are far more sophisticated and complex; there are no intro courses per se.

The most my alma mater gives for an AP score is "notation on the transcript" that you had a good AP score, noted as an unassigned History course (NOT a credit towards graduation).  So they have dropped any pretense that the AP classes remotely resemble what they want even freshmen to tackle in the History Dept.[/quote]

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