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When to take AP Chemistry?


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Would you recommend taking AP chemistry right after the first high school chemistry course or after the basic science series has been completed. I'm looking at various AP courses and am second guessing some ideas I had formed. If my boys are currently doing BJU chemistry and the plan was to take biology next year, would it be better to take AP Chemistry before biology or after?

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You know the one thing I've wondered with so many people taking AP classes early is what happens when they get to college? Now some schools won't even let you use AP credits to get out of freshman classes, meaning you repeat them anyway. Where I went I was able to take their final exam and test out. So there might be some timing there to think about, how fresh they want things to be, what they're trying to study in college. Like if they want to go into Organic as freshman, might be nice to have the AP stuff fresh on their minds, kwim? Or do AP as juniors and do Organic at the cc.

 

I don't recall needing biology knowledge to do AP chem. I knew a guy who had done AP physics first, and he found the AP chem a breeze. But then he was sort of brainy. He works at NASA now. :)

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Chemistry and physics have a lot of topic overlap. My dd is doing AP level physics this year and I can see a lot of the exact same information in the chemistry textbook we're going to use for next year.

 

I would definitely recommend taking chemistry before biology because it will help a lot with all the biochemistry section that seems to be at the beginning of all the biology books. Biology won't help with anything else though.

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You know the one thing I've wondered with so many people taking AP classes early is what happens when they get to college? Now some schools won't even let you use AP credits to get out of freshman classes, meaning you repeat them anyway.

 

That depends on the college! Some, including some of the top schools, do give credits for some or all AP exams with a score of 5.

 

My kids attend a top-20 LAC and received oodles of AP credit!

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At this point I'm not so worried about getting the credit as beefing up the high school transcript. The CC and university concurrent courses we utilized the past year or two have not been what I'd call rigorous. In fact, I think of them as more of compressed high school honors level courses. But, of course, I have no idea how rigorous public high school is anymore, so maybe it really is a level above high school.

 

Credits are nice to have especially for fulfilling the core courses (history, government, composition, etc.), but that's not been the sole reason for my boys taking concurrent.

 

With the next son, I need to have some good, solid courses that are readily understood by an admissions counselor on his transcript. With his LD, he will never test as well as his brothers so if I can add some AP level courses - with outside validation - I hope I can accomplish a better representation of his abilities than what the SAT or ACT will show. He will be able to do concurrent courses, but I'm just not sure that is the right direction to go with him.

 

I could definitely see him taking freshman chemistry even after AP chemistry - or is that a bad idea? I know that the engineering program my oldest is in prefers that the students take calculus, physics, and chemistry through their university rather than transferring - although they do transfer credit.

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