Please help me clarify the visions of AP Biology dancing in my head!

[hillfarm]

I think I may be suffering from delusions of grandeur, but I think I would like to try AP biology next year for 9th grade.

 

However, I am terribly ignorant about the whole process. I have gone to the collegeboard site, which made things clear as mud. Are any of you kind hearted individuals willing to help straighten a novice out on the subject?

 

I have a fairly strong background in biology, having previously been a massage therapist and a marine biologist. Biology doesn't scare me! Labs don't scare me! (I may be an idiot in complete denial:tongue_smilie:.)

 

So...are there any specific requirements for how the class has to be taught, by whom, or with which text? (I am familiar with the collegeboard list of contents and suggested textbooks.)

 

How to select the text I want? I see lots of mention of Campbell, does it matter which edition? Is there a specific set of labs or lab book they must use?

 

Is there any reason NOT to try to follow the AP curriculum and bail out in mid stream if the going gets too rough? I can't remember exactly when we would need to sign up to take the exam. (for May of 2014)

 

What exactly is the difference between AP and honors classes, other than AP scores possibly translating into college credit?

 

Thanks in advance for your kind assistance. I expect this will be me :confused: for a while.

[emubird]

If you are doing this for college credit, you might want to check with the colleges you are considering. It's becoming somewhat more common for colleges to not accept the AP Bio exam for credit. (And some colleges will only give credit for a non-majors Bio class.)

 

It would still be good for admissions, but if you're counting on credit, you should do some research. A lot of colleges have this sort of information online.

 

Also, if your student is planning to major in biology, you might want to consider whether you want them to place out of the intro bio course using a course they took 4 years before college.

 

AP Bio is usually either a 2nd year of biology OR a first year that follows a chemistry course -- or both. With a student who was very willing to work a lot, that might not be an absolute prerequisite, but I suspect it's going to take more time. It's possible you won't finish up in one year. The chemistry can be done as you go, but it might not be a thorough treatment.

 

A student can take the exam no matter what they studied or who their teacher was. There are only strict requirements if you CALL the class AP. Then it has to be approved by the College Board. But I wouldn't bother with that. It's the test score that will matter to colleges, not what the class was called.

 

Campbell is generally accepted to be a good text, but that doesn't mean you can't use another one. There are plenty of decent texts out there.

 

If your student is going to take the AP test, the most important thing to get a copy of is the list of topics and labs that the College Board puts out. That's what will be on the test. This is usually on their site as some sort of pdf file.

 

To score high on the test, the prep books put out by places like McGraw-Hill or Peterson's (there are a lot more) are the way to go. Which of these is the best tends to vary by subject matter, so don't pick one out that someone else found to be good for, say, US History. (We tend to use more than one.)

 

ETA: Generally, a full year of an AP course is supposed to translate into one semester of college credit. This is why the AP Bio test might not get credit as a full year major's class. (This is also problematic for the AP Chem test.) I think colleges tend to see the AP Bio as a one semester survey of all the topics that usually take a full year in college, so they don't know what to do with the AP credit. Is it the first semester of biology? The second? Really nothing because none of the topics were covered in the depth that one would get in a full year course?

 

Colleges have also made the unfortunate discovery that many students who scored well on the AP test really don't know the material well enough to go on to the higher level classes. Even more disturbing is students who may have scored well but take the intro college bio class anyway -- and can't even do well after supposedly doing well in the AP class. One would think the intro level college class should be easy review, but it often isn't. Obviously, this is probably student-specific, but colleges are looking at the general trends.

Edited January 16, 2012 by emubird

[at the beach]

Colleges have also made the unfortunate discovery that many students who scored well on the AP test really don't know the material well enough to go on to the higher level classes. Even more disturbing is students who may have scored well but take the intro college bio class anyway -- and can't even do well after supposedly doing well in the AP class. One would think the intro level college class should be easy review, but it often isn't. Obviously, this is probably student-specific, but colleges are looking at the general trends.

 

I don't mean to hijack but find this interesting. Why do you think this is? Could it be that the kids took the exams earlier in high school and by the time they start college, they no longer remember what they learned in 10th grade AP Biology? Or perhaps they memorize for the test but the material never makes it into long-term memory?

 

Also, can I ask where you read/heard this information?

[emubird]

I know a lot of professors who teach biology (family members and colleagues) and they all seem to find this to be the case. They see it with kids who even took AP Bio in 12th grade, so I doubt it's just the intervening time (although that couldn't really help).

 

I've also heard a few stories that suggest this may also be the case with the AP physics test, but fewer students take that so it isn't as common.

 

And although the AP Calc tests seem to cover calculus better than the Biology test covers biology, I still have the sense that students would be better off just taking the class at college. My daughter, who placed out of calc 1 and 2 with the AP test, found that she had to learn a lot of topics for calc 3 that she should have already known -- but they weren't covered on the AP test. She's pretty smart so she got through it, but it was extremely time consuming to be learning material for 2 classes at once. I wouldn't probably recommend it for most kids if they weren't really good at math. (And even kids who are accelerated and seem to be doing well in the earlier math years may not be able to pull this off. Particularly if they have a full class load otherwise.)

[Barbara H]

If you are doing this for college credit, you might want to check with the colleges you are considering. It's becoming somewhat more common for colleges to not accept the AP Bio exam for credit.

 

I'm curious about this. Can you give some examples? While there are colleges who grant no credit for APs, it has not been my observation that bio earns less credits at schools who do grant AP credits, but I'd love to see examples if there is a trend happening!

 

AP bio granted a huge amount of credit for our homeschool so I thought I'd take a quick look. I checked 10 colleges and all offered credit for AP bio. The schools I checked were: Ohio State, Brown, Florida State, Oberlin, Holy Cross, Boston College, Knox, Western Michigan University, Arizona State, Gordon College. The only school that didn't offer credit for a 4 or 5 was Boston College (while they don't grant credit, they do say the "core requirement" has been filled). A few of the schools offered credit for scores of 3, but all did for scores of 4 and 5. Ohio State granted the most credit, 12 credit hours for scores of four or five.

 

Certainly I don't think think a student should expect that AP bio in 9th grade is going to meet a major requirement for biology in college. But, there can still be a lot of value in the course. If a student is looking at a more competitive college, their peers likely will have had this course. So, even if the student opts to start out in the intro class, they are going to in an intro class where a student who has not had AP bio may be at a big disadvantage.

 

As far as preparing for the course. We liked the Campbell book a lot. As is often the case with textbooks the previous edition or two is virtually identical except the page numbers and problems, so it is fine to get an earlier edition. We also really liked the Thinkwell biology lectures. With Campbell and Thinkwell, it is a substantial course. I would suggest dowloading the PDF from the College Board and using that as your guide to create the course. http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_bio.html I would leave adequate time to prep for the exam, doing practice essays and so forth. Buying a prep book is also a good idea.

[emubird]

All that being said, though, I still think doing either AP classes or college classes in high school can be worthwhile for students who need the extra challenge. I'm just cautioning people that the AP test may not give a full indication of how well the student really knows the material. And that in some cases, it may be worth repeating the class.

 

I think the issue may be trying to bring college into the high school. If one takes the high school student and puts them in a college class that is mostly other college students, then it will likely still be at the level of a college class. However, as more and more high schools bring college into the schools (via AP tests and other methods), the classes tend to be more like high school, with lower standards.

 

As an interesting side note, many high school kids around here take college classes, but they all seem to have exchanged notes on which are the easy classes. So they may not be getting quite the college experience that they think they are. Also, some of these classes seem to be getting easier as more and more high school students sign up for them.

 

And I hear complaints from actual college students about the immaturity of the high school students bringing down the level of instruction in the classes.

 

Some high school kids have really benefited from these programs, so I'm disappointed to see this happening. Some of the high school students have actually been raising the bar, but then there's a lot more who just come in and lower it.

[emubird]

I've now been through most of the Thinkwell biology lectures. I think it would be a good course for prepping to take the AP test.

 

However, I do see that it's not quite the biology course that my husband teaches -- or that I would teach if I were back in teaching. It tends to gloss over difficult things and race through topics.

 

I know that the community college near us was using it as the actual course, though.

 

I'm not going to list colleges near us that don't give bio credit for the AP test because I just have issues with giving out too much personal info. But one really should check with colleges. And be sure the credit being given is for the majors course, if that's what your student will need.

 

A long time ago (really, it WAS the dark ages), the Univ of California gave credit for the AP bio test, but it didn't actually get the student out of any classes. That's usually pretty worthless for most students, particularly in the sciences. They generally have enough credits to graduate and a few more is not much help.

[Jane in NC]

I don't mean to hijack but find this interesting. Why do you think this is? Could it be that the kids took the exams earlier in high school and by the time they start college, they no longer remember what they learned in 10th grade AP Biology? Or perhaps they memorize for the test but the material never makes it into long-term memory?

 

Also, can I ask where you read/heard this information?

 

Not Emubird, but I will weigh in.

 

In my opinion, there is a difference between an AP class and supposedly equivalent college courses. The text books may be the same, but often a high school teacher cannot bring the same expertise to the material that a professor with a PhD in the subject can.

 

My son took the AP Bio exam but since the exam is going to change this May, my comments refer to the former version. At the time my son took the exam, there were twelve required labs. Many high school students (as well as homeschooled ones!) did not even have the equipment to perform these labs. Thus, the experience of the lab becomes a virtual one. Further, there are no standard bio labs offered in every intro biology course across the country. What AP has determined to be important may not be what a professor in Boston or one in rural Wyoming wants to do.

 

My field is Math. The criticism of the AP Calc exam has long been one concerning algorithms. Not all but some (used to be many) Calc I classes in college required students to perform an epsilon/delta proof of a limit. This concept does not translate well to a standardized exam. Thus AP Calc is reduced to an algorithmic skill set and not the best background for math majors or other theoretically inclined students.

 

Some colleges no longer give credit for AP exams but use the tests for placement purposes. Some elite high schools no longer participate in AP. They feel to restricted by the syllabi. Many colleges limit credit for the exams but still like to see them on applications as they demonstrate that students are capable of doing challenging work. For students from schools not on the radar of elite schools (or homeschoolers for that matter), AP does offer a way of demonstrating that students have mastered a standardized body of work.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Jane in NC

[choirfarm]

Well several of them like Baylor and TCU would give credit for AP Calc IF you were not a STEM type major. I believe the same thing is true for Biology if you are premed.. Also, med schools do not like AP credit AT ALL and it weakens their application.

I'm curious about this. Can you give some examples? While there are colleges who grant no credit for APs, it has not been my observation that bio earns less credits at schools who do grant AP credits, but I'd love to see examples if there is a trend happening!

 

AP bio granted a huge amount of credit for our homeschool so I thought I'd take a quick look. I checked 10 colleges and all offered credit for AP bio. The schools I checked were: Ohio State, Brown, Florida State, Oberlin, Holy Cross, Boston College, Knox, Western Michigan University, Arizona State, Gordon College. The only school that didn't offer credit for a 4 or 5 was Boston College (while they don't grant credit, they do say the "core requirement" has been filled). A few of the schools offered credit for scores of 3, but all did for scores of 4 and 5. Ohio State granted the most credit, 12 credit hours for scores of four or five.

 

Certainly I don't think think a student should expect that AP bio in 9th grade is going to meet a major requirement for biology in college. But, there can still be a lot of value in the course. If a student is looking at a more competitive college, their peers likely will have had this course. So, even if the student opts to start out in the intro class, they are going to in an intro class where a student who has not had AP bio may be at a big disadvantage.

 

As far as preparing for the course. We liked the Campbell book a lot. As is often the case with textbooks the previous edition or two is virtually identical except the page numbers and problems, so it is fine to get an earlier edition. We also really liked the Thinkwell biology lectures. With Campbell and Thinkwell, it is a substantial course. I would suggest dowloading the PDF from the College Board and using that as your guide to create the course. http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_bio.html I would leave adequate time to prep for the exam, doing practice essays and so forth. Buying a prep book is also a good idea.

[TheHomeScientist]

I've been told the same by various college/university chemistry and biology professors. I don't think the problem is so much with the students forgetting what they've learned as it is that many homeschool science programs at the high-school level lack rigor, particularly with regard to labs. Students can't remember what they haven't done.

 

In my opinion, to really do the equivalent of a first-year major's college biology or chemistry course properly at home requires devoting at minimum a daily session of 1 to 1.5 hours to the subject five days a week for a full year, split roughly 60% lecture/text and 40% lab. That's a major commitment, obviously, but there's really no way of getting around the fact that hard sciences are, well, hard.

 

Not that most public schools are any better. One of my young friends, now a freshman in college, took honors biology in our public school system, which is a good one as public school systems go. Jasmine passed the course with flying colors. I asked her how much lab time she'd had during the course, and she told me there'd been very little hands-on lab work. "Labs" were mostly demonstrations, and she said that during the entire course she'd probably had less than one hour total of actually using a microscope.

 

If it were me, I wouldn't worry about standard versus honors versus AP biology. I'd pick a good spine to start with. Miller-Levine is a good choice, as is CK-12 (http://www.ck12.org), which costs nothing. I would buy a decent microscope, and I would do a ton of labs. I would work all the way through the text from start to finish, doing labs all along the way. If that took one year, great, but if it took two years that's also fine. At the end of this process, my student would understand biology and be prepared to do well on the AP exam and in college biology.

[Barbara H]

 

I'm not going to list colleges near us that don't give bio credit for the AP test because I just have issues with giving out too much personal info. But one really should check with colleges. And be sure the credit being given is for the majors course, if that's what your student will need.

 

.

 

Of course. There are over 3,000 four year colleges in the U.S. so it would be too time consuming to check them all, but I will say over the past month I've looked at over 100, a mix of public, private, more selective and less. It doesn't appear to be common to me that a school would give credit for APs, but not bio. In fact, AP bio leads to quite a bit of credit at many schools. Higher scores can net major credit at some schools. Of course a student could still take these courses if they didn't feel ready to go on to higher placement.

 

For any course in ninth grade, I wouldn't expect the main reason to do it would be to attempt to meet college major requirements or med school requirements. Of course that makes no sense. There are still good reasons for some students to do APs. Homeschoolers get to design their own courses so what the average AP experience is like doesn't really matter that much to us. We can choose to put in as much challenge as we want.

 

We found AP bio was a good opportunity to: 1. set a goal and meet it 2. Get experience working with deadlines 3. Learn biology in more depth than we would have otherwise 4. Get practice with learning to write essays 5. Provide outside validation our transcript for admissions and scholarship purposes. 6. Earn college credit which allowed more flexibility in course selection later. We didn't need for everyone of those things to happen to have it be a good experience. If the primary goal is earning college credit, I wouldn't suggest it for a 9th grader. If your kid is eager to learn more biology and you see this as a good opportunity to provide some challenge, I would encourage you to go for it.

[Barbara H]

If that took one year, great, but if it took two years that's also fine. At the end of this process, my student would understand biology and be prepared to do well on the AP exam and in college biology.

 

Yes, this is a really good point. Take your time, if it takes a couple of years that's totally okay.

[Barbara H]

Well several of them like Baylor and TCU would give credit for AP Calc IF you were not a STEM type major. I believe the same thing is true for Biology if you are premed.. Also, med schools do not like AP credit AT ALL and it weakens their application.

 

What med schools don't want to see are students having substituted AP credits for taking core classes with good labs in college. Having taken the AP in high school doesn't force a student to skip the core classes in college and in fact now may be the more standard preparation for these courses. I recently spoke with a first year college student who was premed but hadn't taken AP bio in high school. Everyone around her had, which meant she was far less prepared for the course. These course "weeder" courses can be really difficult and students who have not had strong courses in high school may feel less prepared. And, of course, many students who take the APs in a particular subject aren't planning on majoring in it. It may be they are happy to have met the core requirement to finish college earlier or save credits for more major courses.

 

As far as AP calc, many colleges consider Calc I/AB calc and calc II/BC calc to actually be "premajor" requirements that don't count toward a major whether you take them through APs or on campus. So, a student who is interested in majoring in math or engineering may find they are required to have the AP or the college course, but those credits don't count toward the major anyway. Of course it varies from school to school.

[Barbara H]

 

As an interesting side note, many high school kids around here take college classes, but they all seem to have exchanged notes on which are the easy classes. So they may not be getting quite the college experience that they think they are. Also, some of these classes seem to be getting easier as more and more high school students sign up for them.

 

.

 

It is unfortunate that this is happening. California does seem to be different than a lot of places in this regard because there is a much bigger concentration of high school students taking college courses.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Barbara H

[hillfarm]

Thanks so much for all the input.

 

Our situation is a little different in that dh works at a local university, so dd can take advantage of the tuition remission program there. She is not currently considering a science major, although she is only 13. However, those types of things just don't seem to mesh very well with her overall personality - much to my dismay. She takes after dh more than me.

 

I copied a list of the AP exam credits that the university accepts. AP biology does earn credit equal to one of the basic biology classes there, but only for non bio majors. Which is fine for us, since dd is much more interested in graphic design or public relations/advertising.

 

In general, my current plan for H/S science is 9-AP biology, 10-zoology, 11-PSEO chemistry, 12-maybe nutrition, but flexible depending on any late blooming interests dd develops. This should yield credit for 2 college science courses to cover required course credits for a non-science major.

 

Depending on how I feel the bio is going, we might wait until after zoology to take the exam. I need to find a decent H/S zoology text or syllabus and see exactly what is considered to be acceptable content and determine whether that would reinforce the bio for the exam or whether it would push the bio info to the back burner.

 

I also think that a decent AP exam score would reinforce the fact to the admissions office at the university that dd did learn something during our homeschooling. In my experience, I have spoken with a few area homeschoolers whose "mommy grades" seemed based on a rather low standard so I am probably being a little paranoid about this.

 

The reason I am giving the whole AP/PSEO thing so much consideration is that if we can manage to schedule and complete it all correctly, dd can enter the university after completing high school as a junior and after 4 years there, graduate with a master's instead of a bachelor's degree. With no debt.

Edited January 16, 2012 by hillfarm

[Barbara H]

One thing you may want to know is that there is some chemistry foundation that is helpful with AP biology so it can be a bit harder to do biology first.

 

Graduating with a master's with no debt would be fantastic. It is great that you are looking to the future in a way that will leave many options open.

[hillfarm]

We did a pretty good chemistry course for 7th grade - McHenry's Elements and Carbon Chemistry plus a good deal of supplementation. If we need to stop and do a bit of review, I think we can manage it.