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Comparisons between AP courses/tests: some harder, some easier?


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I'm debating which AP courses to do with DD (rising jr.) next year. She is very interested in AP psych and perhaps AP art history, not so much in AP histories or englishes. She'd really like to do an anthology approach to American Lit and Brit Lit (not so heavy as APs) so she can concentrate on *creative* writing.

 

Is there any conventional wisdom that "everyone" knows, about which AP courses are harder, "fluff", more/less desirable as a mark of a "good" student?

 

The psych and art history are because those are in her field of interest, not because we're trying to pad her transcript. Should I be doing that, too? She will probably go to a smaller, church-affiliated LAC, so we're not aiming for Ivies. We will need for her to be considered for scholarships!

 

I really didn't want her to have to study for SAT2s; she'll have to study for PSAT and SAT as it is. (She doesn't seem to be a natural test-taker.)

 

Any input?

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Hello Valerie,

 

I have seen discussions which label some AP courses as simpler than others. I recall that World and US Histories were both considered harder whereas the two Government courses (US and Comparative Politics) are often considered one semester each.

 

If you look at a fairly elite college's website you might also see tables which show what credit is given for a given score on a given exam.

 

As regards SAT subject tests, I think that your daughter need not take them unless she decides to apply to a college that requires them.

 

Regards,

Kareni

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Ds self studied psych and got a 4. The nice thing about it is there is no "essay". Yes, there are written questions but they can be bullet points, not full fleged thesis type essays. Go to the college board website and look under AP central. Sign up as an educator and you can see the written questions from past years.

 

Human Geography is a very interesting course but not many schools will give credit no matter what your score, many 9th graders can take this since the essay is like psych.

 

APUSH is supposed to be one of the hardest and the foreign language ones are also very difficult.

 

Hope this helps.

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Usually certain AP scores are "worth" six credits, while others are worth three.

 

For example, for most of the colleges my kids looked at:

 

English Language -- 6 credits

English Lit- 6

chemistry & biology -- 6 (or 8) each

physics B -- 3

US history & European history -- 6 each

Music theory & psychology -- 3 each

US Govt & Comp Govt -- 3 each

 

US Govt is a nice exam -- many public schools consider it a sophomore course, and not too much is expected in the essays, but it does cover a fair amount of material and can (at certain colleges) fulfill a political science requirement. It will be my younger kids' first AP course.

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Usually certain AP scores are "worth" six credits, while others are worth three.

 

For example, for most of the colleges my kids looked at:

 

English Language -- 6 credits

English Lit- 6

chemistry & biology -- 6 (or 8) each

physics B -- 3

US history & European history -- 6 each

Music theory & psychology -- 3 each

US Govt & Comp Govt -- 3 each

 

US Govt is a nice exam -- many public schools consider it a sophomore course, and not too much is expected in the essays, but it does cover a fair amount of material and can (at certain colleges) fulfill a political science requirement. It will be my younger kids' first AP course.

 

Thanks, Gwen! This sure makes a great example for the "YMMV according to the individual college" argument. I called the local 4-year state university. With an AP Eng Lang 5 score, they would only give 3 hours credit for the first semester freshman comp class (expository writing) and no additional credit for the second semester (argumentative writing) if a student had also taken AP English Lit. Ugghh! It may be because they have so many international and not-that-great local students in the student body, that they feel they *have* to do those in house. ?? I'm glad that's not our target for dd.

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Regarding AP Psychology, I can tell you more tomorrow, because my son is taking it then :) He is taking World History, US History, and Psychology this year with PA Homeschoolers, and Psychology has definitely been the easiest class. The exam is only two hours long too. He is much less worried about this one than US History (which is over now, and he didn't think it was too bad) and World History (which is on Thursday ... and he's dreading ... so much material!). My kids had a friend in PS last year who took AP Psychology and didn't study that hard, and she got a 5.

 

Regarding AP Art History, my daughter took it with PA Homeschoolers and loved it. If your daughter has a natural inclination toward art, I think she will enjoy studying for the test. They have to memorize about 120 works of art (that is, recognize the title and painter by sight) and of course there's lots of other material as well. DD got a 5 and was got credit for two semesters of art history at her college. She was able to go directly on to 2000-level classes in art history her freshman year, and so she's going to be able to get a double major.

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Valerie, my ds just took the Environmental Science AP this morning, because he enjoys science and it was considered an "easier" one, so I thought it would be a good way to test the waters since he is still young and has several years of AP's ahead of him, if he likes.

 

And since the Environmental Science is typically one-semester in college, that's another indication that it is one of the easier ones.

 

Also, I have heard from some people that it is good to take AP's in an area outside your planned major, since you may indeed want to take your major requirements at the university, instead of earlier in high school, but on the flip side of that, some people recommend taking the AP's in your area of strength, since they can be challenging courses. So it is hard to say what to recommend! I guess each student is different, and each family finds their own way!

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Well, I'll chime in if just to second some of the wisdom others have already shared. Our only experience thus far is with Human Geography and Biology. I knew HG was considered an easier AP (many of the students on the AP track take HG in 9th at our local hs). It's a great course and my geography-loving ds really enjoyed it this year. He took it through PA Homeschoolers which was excellent. He'll take that test this Friday.

 

AP Bio was waaay more work than HG. Tons of memorization, lots of biochemistry and much more time-consuming. My ds really found out that he can't just read and understand the material, he's got to commit it to memory inside and out! Much, much harder than HG.

 

That's been our experience so far. HTH!

Lisa

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AP courses have a specific content they are supposed to cover..which is on the AP exam. It should be equivelent to taking the course at college level.

 

While I think that "should" be true, in our case, for Environmental Science, the university course only covered about half the material on the AP test. And I understand that that is really not too unusual.

 

For instance, when you think of "Biology" as a college class, you have to keep in mind what school and what level of biology. For instance, at Univ. of Pittsburgh, I believe they have four introductory biology courses, each aimed at a different segment of students (non-majors, pre-med, etc). So the AP exam can't really be equivilent to all four courses equally.

 

Of course, most students don't take the university course, and then the AP test (which we did!) because it isn't necessary. We chose to do it, because like Mt Evererst, "it was there," but really so that we could validate work done by a homeschooled student. Just one approach.

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My ds took AP World History last year as a freshman and got a 4 :001_smile:

He JUST took AP European History last Friday and said it was far, FAR harder then World. He is hoping to have managed a 3, but we won't know for a while.

He will do AP U.S. History and whichever one is for Jr. English next year.

 

Just checked the school website - AP English Language is for Jrs, AP English Lit is for Srs. I think ds's brains will melt - the course descriptions look hard!

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Wow -- they recommend doing AP English Language for juniors and AP English lit for seniors?

 

We treated it as an either/or choice for senior year! My kids could choose one or the other, but neither did both.

 

My dd certainly needed her three previous years of lit classes to be able to succeed in AP English Lit. Of course, she doesn't get along that well with literature, so if she was a more humanities-oriented person by nature, :glare: maybe I could imagine her dealing with the AP Lit with only two years of high schoo lit under her belt.

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Wow -- they recommend doing AP English Language for juniors and AP English lit for seniors?

 

 

 

Yep, that's what the AP english teacher here teaches--Language their Jr. year, then Lit their senior year. The teacher has too much "life" going on in her life, as numerous life crises have intruded on her this year, so we won't be driving 40 minutes to sit under a distracted teacher next year. Poor lady!

 

We're still trying to decide what to do. We thought of a whole new option today...

 

I gives me the shivers...I *so* hate uncertainty.

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Wow -- they recommend doing AP English Language for juniors and AP English lit for seniors? .

 

Our district uses the AP classes instead of offering Honors English for Jr and Sr year (ds is in public school). After all the writing in Honors English as a Frosh and Soph., and all the writing in the AP history classes, I think the AP English won't be too bad.

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My dd took AP World hist as a sophmore and AP Us Hist and Art History as a Junior (she took 4 others these past 2 weeks - but I can't tell you about those till her scores come out).

 

She scored 5s on them all - and all were just done at home. We didn't even have a curriculum for Art History - she read Annotated Mona Lisa, she worked through a book Walsh puts out on 35 artists, she watched Sister Wendy videos, we wtahced Teaching Company videos on teh Louvre and then visited the Louvre (that was a nice field trip!!) - and then we foudn a AP test prep book on Amazon that had just come out and it had a CD with it with lots of pictures of art works.

 

She loved studying for it, but felt there were big holes in her knowledge too. And she came back from the exam saying it was a nightmare - she'd hardly recognized any art works they'd given. So she guessed wildly and made things up. She is a good test taker and would have made educated guesses, but I would still say this can't be an extremely hard one to score well at as she got a 5. That said though, one of her friends who is at school did it as a school course and managed a 1!

 

So, I guess my advice is - if she likes art, I would do it. Any AP looks good when applying for scholarships!

Meryl

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