What's the deal with AP courses in high school?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I suppose we used to have AP way back when I was in high school, you know, when we didn’t smoke in the bathroom because students were supposed to smoke in the courtyard. Despite being pretty good at science and math, I didn’t take any AP courses, and maybe I knew people who did, but it didn’t exactly register.

Now, though, Kid Cheesesteak is in 10th grade and it seems like EVERYONE is signing up for an AP class. It’s AP Class Sign up day, and it’s like “how many can my kid take?” and “How do I tell if they’re signed up for ALL their AP courses?” and “My kid is taking 12 AP courses this year along with 3 sports, 5 clubs, and a partridge in a pear tree… is he overscheduled?”

I don’t get it, I really don’t get it, are 11th graders supposed to be taking multiple “college” level courses in History and Chemistry and Biology and Algebra?

I very much believe that children should get a chance to be children, should have free time to do what THEY want, even if it’s something stupid. I also appreciate that our educational system is a thinly disguised Thunderdome, and I don’t want my kid left behind because I don’t understand the value of AP courses.

So, I guess my question is, is this focus on AP classes a new thing that I need to nudge my kid to explore, or is it asking kids to do too much for no good reason?

2

I don’t remember there being a large number of AP classes. That might just be my faulty memory. I know there was AP English, AP Calculus and AP Physics. I only stuck with it on the AP English track. Dropped down a level and didn’t take AP Physics senior year. Didn’t help me or hurt me.

3

Is your kid planning to attend college? If so, then those classes can be money - my son took enough of them so that he is finishing college a semester early. He only had to take one summer class to have enough credits to nix his final semester. As a result he is hitting the job market earlier than most of his cohort.

My daughter had enough credits to do the same, but due to her major some of the AP courses did not carry-over. So, YMMV.

In both cases they made the decisions to take AP coursework, with a little nudging from us. My son, at least, now sees the payoff.

4

I took five AP courses in high school: US History, Calculus, Physics, English, and French. That was back in the 70s. So they were definitely a thing. Maybe they simply have more now?

5

They’re certainly a lot more common now than they used to be. When I was in high school in the 90s, at a good private school, I took all three of the AP classes my school offered. Nowadays, the school I’m currently teaching at offers 20 different AP classes, and it’s not uncommon for a single student to take 6-9 of them.

Personally, I advise students to take AP courses in the subjects that they don’t like, because those are the ones they’ll want to test out of.

6

As it turned out, the college I went to did not accept AP tests to get out of classes, so they didn’t help me financially. I sure learned a lot, though!

7

The AP classes can help with admission since the college will consider them as being closer to college-level work than normal classes. If the AP classes transfer as credits, that can mean the student is able to graduate a semester or two earlier. Even if they graduate at the normal time, the extra credits will allow them to take a lighter class load. It may allow them to take 12 or 15-hour semesters versus 18-hour semesters. They can use the extra time to take classes they are interested in, join sports, hang out with friends, etc.

However, AP classes can be a lot of work. If the student does not want to do work at that level, it won’t really be worth it to keep them in those classes. Not only will their grades suffer, but they may burn out on school all together.

8

College professor and former AP scorer, here.

It depends. First of all, which colleges is your child looking at, how much course credit do they offer for a high score on the AP exam, and how likely is your child to actually achieve that score? Assuming they take a sufficient number of AP courses and do well in them, there is often a real opportunity to shave a semester or a year off of a college degree, which is a pretty significant benefit if the student is struggling to pay for college, or if it frees them up to do something else beneficial with the credits and time they save (double major, semester abroad, etc.)

On the other hand, there are plenty of situations where that isn’t as beneficial as you might think. For example, students in my university’s residential Honors program generally get a scholarship package that covers a full four years; there’s no reason for them to WANT to complete their degree faster, and having AP / dual enrollment credit for too many of our gen ed courses can actually cause complications, because they are expected to take a number of those classes as a cohort. Usually, our answer is “too bad, we know you already have credit for World History I, but you’re taking it again regardless,” because it’s a small enough program that giving them a choice isn’t practical, and because we figure Honors World History I at the college level, with a different instructor who emphasizes different stuff, is likely to be different enough from their high-school version that they won’t get bored. But they are often unhappy that they “wasted” time taking the AP course in high school.

At the other end of the achievement scale, there are schools where too many students are pushed into AP regardless of interest or ability level, the quality of the course is correspondingly low, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time. In my AP exam-scoring days, we sometimes saw whole batches of essays, evidently from a single school, where it was clear NOBODY would be earning a passing grade. I don’t know anything about your kid’s school, but I would say if they’re encouraging 10th graders to load up on AP, that’s a bit of a red flag. 10th grade is young, and most 15-year-olds are not really intellectually ready for college-level coursework, so unless this is a private / magnet school with selective admissions, it’s likely to end up being an AP course in name only.

There are also schools, and students, where AP is clearly the better option just for its own sake, regardless of the potential to earn college credit. If your kid has a passion for a particular subject and WANTS more advanced coursework, it’s a no-brainer. If the school reserves its best teachers for those courses, it’s also pretty much a no-brainer (with the caveat that “best” doesn’t always mean best for any given student, and that being in a demanding class you have no interest in is a recipe for disaster).

Finally: what does your child want to do? IMO, if they’re old enough for college-level coursework, they are old enough to make decisions about their education for themselves.

9

As a point of reference, I went to high school in the mid-60’s. It was a large urban 4-year high school, around 3,000 students. I don’t think there were any college-level advanced placement classes available to us, or at least none that we knew about. If I recall correctly, it was theoretically possible to schedule a college class at a local state college if the student could qualify, and try to fit the rest of their class schedule around that. The highest math class offered was some kind of pre-calculus, but I was just learning by rote so it didn’t help me with calculus in college. My college did have advanced placement tests available in a few areas, like foreign languages and math. My four years of HS Russian got me into 2nd year Russian in college, for example.

I was always college-bound, so if there had been such things I’m sure I would have been encouraged/pushed into them. That might have been a good thing, I was pretty bored with most of the pablum being served to HS seniors when I was there.

10

The AP credits I earned in High School in 1975 helped me graduate college in 3 1/2 years. Hence I saved a semester’s tuition, AND kept living and partying with my best friends until June graduation. Fun times!

11

If your kids are capable of it than why not? I took 5 AP classes my senior year and it wasn’t particularly difficult. Freshman and sophomore college I found to be far too easy and pandering in comparison to my senior and even junior year of high school. We had discussions in AP European history (hell even 9th grade history) that would trigger college kids and adults of today. So, I found them to be tremendously valuable not just in the depth and breadth of material but also in terms of the attitudes of frank discussion. We didn’t need to censor ourselves when discussing literature, religion, or art.

ETA:

There is also a huge value in the difference in peer group and the difference in the parents of said peer groups. Surrounding yourself with people who want to be challenged and want to challenge you and their families who promote such a concept has many benefits.

12

35 years ago when my younger siblings were applying to colleges, taking 2-3 AP classes and getting a 4 or 5 was enough combined with an SAT score of 1300 to get you into Georgia Tech, Florida or William & Mary. Hell, my brother got into Ga Tech without taking AP Calc or AP Physics.

Now if you only have 3 AP classes and you went to a well resourced high school, the application readers at those same schools will consider you to be a slacker. Never mind that in my kids’ school there are probably 10% or more of the students who are going to be straight As for all four years and the only way to improve your class rank is to load up on the AP classes in sophomore and Junior years.

It’s not even about saving money. Most of the time you aren’t going to graduate early even with 6-7 AP classes. You just get the opportunity to take more 4xxx and 5xxx level courses.

13

Oh, lord. I could go on and on about this.

It helped some. In my younger daughter she took AP classes that pushed her into a nursing degree she ultimately doesn’t like.
My older daughters both graduated college earlier. They basically just gapped out those semesters. And ended on the same timetrack anyway.

My biggest gripe with it is they start so early pushing the students in higher levels to get prepared for early algebra and reading at higher levels in jr.high so they can take all the AP courses in highschool. It just never stops.

I have 4th grader and 5th grader grandchildren. They are definitely precocious learners and in the higher groups. One is in the gifted and talented program. It’s push push push.
It’s kinda sad.

They should have more fun times. It’s way too early to burn out. I’m afraid they will.

Ah, the joyful days I had reading book after book for fun and drawing pictures all the way through most math and algebra classes. That I’ve never ever, not once regretted missing out on.

14

It depends on the University. Mine offered catch up classes in English, Algebra and Chemistry for students that didn’t take it in high school. It was also helpful for Adult learners returning to school.

I took the Prep English and Chemistry class. The Chemistry class didn’t have a lab.

But, the Prep classes didn’t fulfill my degree requirements. I still had to take 2 semesters of Freshman English Comp and Chemistry I and II.

Junior colleges are great for adult learners. You can spend a year taking all the prep courses and get ready for college. They are much less expensive compared to large Universities.

15

I attended a sad little rural high school in the late '90s that only offered three AP classes - Calculus, US History, and English. I took all three, mainly to boost my class ranking; the university I ended up attending would only give you credit if you got a high exam score, so that made AP Calculus and English a waste of time (scored a 1 and a 3, respectively). My AP US History teacher was spectacular; not only did she truly teach the stuff, she actually brought in a university professor friend of hers to teach us proper writing techniques, something that I feel has benefitted me to this day. I got a 5 on that exam.

Did it burn me out? Oh hell yes…particularly AP Calculus, which was taught by a coach who clearly had better things to be doing with his time. (When my parents realized what was going on in the course, they actually hired a tutor, but it was too late in the semester by that point.) Calculus was a particularly bad one for me to burn out on; I pretty much didn’t have decent math teachers past 8th grade, and even had a few who would freely admit that they taught class in such a way that the lowest performing kids would pass. In other words, they weren’t teaching much of anything. I’m still amazed that I got accepted into an engineering program at my university; of course, I ended up in what was essentially remedial math classes my first summer. That was supposed to help me catch up to the curriculum, but I was overwhelmed by college-level math (and physics, until a kind professor realized I didn’t have the math background to understand what was going on).

16

The early prep can be detrimental since far too many people in education confuse quantity with quality. I’d rather see three two-hour classes that had a more integrated curriculum then 6-8 classes a day each with projects and homework.

17

I didn’t even know AP existed until my roommate at the University of California asked how many AP credits do you have? "What the hell is AP?

My kids went to a small combined middle high school that you get in via lottery in a very wealthy school district. Started in High School with AP History AP class taught over two years in freshman and sophomore years. It was literally one class, so depending on the cycle you either started at the beginning or else your class started with the mid-ages to modern, then the 2nd year did the first half. By senior year, most kids were taking 4-5 AP classes.

The benefit being that in a WA State school, you could opt out of a lot of breadth classes or language classes.

The biggest learning as a parent is if your kid takes AP science classes, it is not really “university” level. It’s much more akin to junior college. So, if your kid wants to avoid a totally horrific first semester of University, retake those same chem, calculus, bio class introductory classes. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that an AP Chemistry 5 means you are anywhere prepared to take the 2nd Chemistry for Chem majors class at university.

That said the AP classes seem to give a real good grounding for the University intro classes on the same subject, and really helps with getting the fundamentals down for your second semester to take off the training wheels.

18

My answer to the OP would be: what is your kid like?

I was as bookish as it was possible to be and I would have loved the opportunity to take a bunch of good, challenging courses. The sad truth was that I went to a lousy high school that left me woefully unprepared for college even though on paper my three AP courses made me look good. In reality, my AP English course had five students in it, taught by a teacher retiring that year who did little but read us Shakespeare in a monotone. I sat in front row and did math homework and/or played cards with the guy sitting next to me. Waste of time? Yes, totally. But AP History wound up changing my life and making me into a historian.

Is little Cheesesteak somebody who wants and needs these classes to make schooling worthwhile? What kind of college are they going to and for what degrees and for what reasons? What expectations will they have of applicants? Can the high school be trusted to have teachers with the ability to teach this number of AP classes? Has your kid’s previous schooling provided the preparation needed? Are there other parents you can talk to about the school and colleges?

I’m glad you’re looking into this. I went to college knowing nothing about any aspect of college and lost a semester before I learned enough to change everything about coursework. (This was in the 60s when everyone was first person in the family to go to college, so there was no one to ask.) Focus on your kid and their needs and wants and get some answers.

19

Before opening this thread, I had no idea AP classes had such a long history. I just looked it up and learned they go back to the 1950s. I never heard of them until after I graduated high school in the late '80s. My somewhat crappy but not completely worthless, more-or-less rural, high school never offered them back then. They did offer a very limited selection of college-level classes to seniors in conjunction with a nearby fully accredited liberal arts college. My older siblings got to take a few interesting classes that way: logic, economics and something else, as I recall. By the time I came along, they only offered American literature and American history, two subjects that I’d already been studying a year or two earlier. I earned college credit from them but I don’t think I learned much of anything that I didn’t already know. The classes were not noticeably more difficult or more comprehensive than the high school classes I’d already passed.

20

The three AP classes I took didn’t get me out of any college classes, either. AP Bio, I got a 5 on, but as an astronomy major, a science credit in a different department didn’t really mean anything. History, I got a 4, which would have been good enough, except it was the wrong history (I can’t remember if it was AP US and my college needed World, or vice-versa). English, I could have used, except on that one I only got a 3, which wasn’t enough.

But the primary reason I took them was because I wanted challenging classes (I knew going in that the bio wouldn’t do anything for me), and I got that.

This is also true. AP Physics, for instance, is about 2/3 of an actual college physics course. It’s fine if you’re just looking to meet a general education requirement and majoring in something else (and a lot more rigorous than a lot of the actual college courses folks take to meet those requirements), but it’s not going to be of any direct use for a physics or engineering major (your major will probably make you re-take those classes even if you got a 5). That said, it’ll still make it a lot easier to learn all of that material a second time, and you’re going to be taking some science course in 12th grade anyway, so…