AP classes: opinions, how does it work?

[Teaching3bears]

I had posted about possibly sending my son to a international baccalaureate program in high school but based on comments and other things we decided against it.  Several of you had mentioned AP classes and I did not thunk we had them in our area but we do.  How does it work exactly?  Does the student have to take extra classes beforehand?  Are the AP classes hard?  Do they have to get certain grades to qualify to take the classes?  Any opinions on it all?  

 

[Farrar]

Do you mean AP's at home or in school?

AP classes are meant to be a semester worth of college taught over a year. They have a specific scope and sequence of information. With a few exceptions, they culminate in a single exam. Most of the exams have a multiple choice section followed by free response questions. A few of them are different - for example, AP Studio Art requires a portfolio. Most of them do not have prerequisites, or classes you need to take first. However, students need to be able to tackle the level of information and have a general sense of the background before diving in. A student can't take the AP Calculus exams before taking calculus, for example. The AP Literature exam is much easier to take a student's senior or junior year because the more one reads, the better one can do. But most of them represent a body of knowledge you can cover in a year.

They are very widely used in schools now. You can also find most of them online for your student - PA Homeschoolers is the most comprehensive online source, but there are certainly many others. You can also teach them at home. To teach an AP at home, you have two options. 1) You can get your syllabus approved by the College Board. This allows you to put the course down as AP Course on the transcript. Or 2) you can teach the course and help your student prep for the exam and then have your student take the exam, but NOT call the course AP on the transcript. Instead, you call it something like "Honors Course" or "Course with AP" and list the score.

If your student is homeschooled and wants to take an AP exam, you have to find them a seat at a school to do it. This can be easy in some places, hard in others. It's depends where you live.

There are pluses and minuses to AP exams. Some people like them. Some people prefer dual enrollment classes. Other people do neither. They're one way to show off that a student can master and succeed in a traditional way, but they're far from the only way. They are a form of rigor, but also, they aren't especially deep for the most part. They're survey course level. Whether or not you use them - in school or at home - totally depends on a student's individual needs and goals.

[Teaching3bears]

Thanks for all the info. I meant at a school but now I wonder if I could homeschool him one class during a summer or if he could take an online class as well. I think that the school near me might just offer 5-6 AP classes.

[Farrar]

Doing an AP over the summer would be tricky as all the exams are only offered in May.

[Mbelle]

My older 2 students took a couple of AP classes each for the experience and also our local colleges just seem to love having students who have taken AP, therefore we did take a few to make them happy on applications.

I and my kids found AP to be excessive busy work and it seems like a lot more time than it's worth.  Our experience is that the honors classes at the hybrid school were much more interesting and layered and that the teachers had more leeway to really make the classes interesting and without a bunch of extra assignments.  With a good teacher I would take non AP every time, if I didn't care about college applications.

I can't speak for math AP.  My ds is doing one this year and I have no experience with Calculus.  I will say ds is finding he can't do his problems in 20 min and turn them in and get an A, but that's likely the same in a non AP Calc. So wether it's the AP or just that it's calculus he's having to slow down and plan ahead a bit more, which I hope is preparing him for college math.  

To compare my ds took AP Eng Lit last year and this year he is doing DE  Eng 1102 at a regional college.  DE has overall been a better fit (despite an instructor change and some issues receiving graded work back in a timely manner) and his writing was challenged and it was only 1 semester with 4 papers as the grade.  His writing was challenged and he had to up his game in quick order.  AP seemed to drag on forever and he was writing a paper every single week.  It was very tedious, monotonous and laborious.   I think about Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd when we take AP classes.

[daijobu]

@Farrar FTW with her detailed informative reply.  I will only reiterate that if you have a student who enjoys taking tests, AP is a great choice.  We celebrate by going online and reading the humorous memes posted by other students.  (Don't miss them, the are pretty hilarious.)  On the flip side, an illness on the wrong week of May can potentially derail an entire year of preparation.  

Another advantage to becoming an official AP teacher is that the College Board makes available lots of resources such as old exams, graded papers and rubrics for practice.  If  you select one of their pre-approved syllabi, then your approval is automatic within a few seconds.  And they will even tell you that you are not obligated to follow an approved syllabus.  It's weird that way.  

I never actually taught my dd an AP class, she always took them online.  But I would go through the motions of getting CB approval and then download all the old exams for her to use as practice.  

I'm not very familiar with IB, but my sense is that you need to get good at every subject.  With AP you can choose the exams that match your student's strengths or interests.  If you have a future doctor, then AP bio and AP chem will be good choices.  A future poet might enjoy AP English.  It's an easy way to show a particular interest in addition to ECs, without busting your butt on subjects that are less interesting.  

Another big negative to APs is finding a school that will host the exam.  You can't just sign up online like with the SAT.  You need to contact schools local to you and see if they will allow outside students to test there.  You'll need to call them directly and ask specifically about a particular exam because they may not offer for example AP physics to their own students, and so won't host the exam for anyone.  To make matters worse, the deadline to sign up for the exam is earlier now than in the past so you really need to have your ducks in a row and get a testing location finalized not long after the school year starts.  For more information, see this thread.  This is also a fraught issue for less popular exams like some foreign languages and for students who require accommodations.  

[madteaparty]

33 minutes ago, daijobu said:

@Farrar FTW with her detailed informative reply.  I will only reiterate that if you have a student who enjoys taking tests, AP is a great choice.  We celebrate by going online and reading the humorous memes posted by other students.  (Don't miss them, the are pretty hilarious.)  On the flip side, an illness on the wrong week of May can potentially derail an entire year of preparation.  

Another advantage to becoming an official AP teacher is that the College Board makes available lots of resources such as old exams, graded papers and rubrics for practice.  If  you select one of their pre-approved syllabi, then your approval is automatic within a few seconds.  And they will even tell you that you are not obligated to follow an approved syllabus.  It's weird that way.  

I never actually taught my dd an AP class, she always took them online.  But I would go through the motions of getting CB approval and then download all the old exams for her to use as practice.  

I'm not very familiar with IB, but my sense is that you need to get good at every subject.  With AP you can choose the exams that match your student's strengths or interests.  If you have a future doctor, then AP bio and AP chem will be good choices.  A future poet might enjoy AP English.  It's an easy way to show a particular interest in addition to ECs, without busting your butt on subjects that are less interesting.  

Another big negative to APs is finding a school that will host the exam.  You can't just sign up online like with the SAT.  You need to contact schools local to you and see if they will allow outside students to test there.  You'll need to call them directly and ask specifically about a particular exam because they may not offer for example AP physics to their own students, and so won't host the exam for anyone.  To make matters worse, the deadline to sign up for the exam is earlier now than in the past so you really need to have your ducks in a row and get a testing location finalized not long after the school year starts.  For more information, see this thread.  This is also a fraught issue for less popular exams like some foreign languages and for students who require accommodations.  

Mmm, I wonder if it’s possible now after the change to get approved for a class and be able to use the content with no student “joining” your class...bc presumably they’d join their online class?

[daijobu]

10 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

Mmm, I wonder if it’s possible now after the change to get approved for a class and be able to use the content with no student “joining” your class...bc presumably they’d join their online class?

You know, I didn't get a "class" approved, in the sense that I never told them which students or how many were enrolled.  All I needed to tell them was that I was planning to use a particular syllabus, but with the stipulation that I was free to change my mind at any point during the school year.  

I remember when they made a minor adjustment to the AP CS A class, where they replaced one recommended lab with another.  They sent an email to all the "teachers"  (in quotes because it included me), notifying us of the change, but then going to say that even though that lab was no longer part of the course, we did not need to update our syllabus filed with them.  I got the sense that they really don't want to deal with the paperwork.  

In fact, now that my kids are nearly done with AP classes, I have so many pdfs of old exams on my google drive that I no longer need but are taking up my allotted space.  I wonder if anyone here wants them before I delete them?  PM me if you are interested.   

[Farrar]

1 hour ago, madteaparty said:

Mmm, I wonder if it’s possible now after the change to get approved for a class and be able to use the content with no student “joining” your class...bc presumably they’d join their online class?

Yes. My student taking an AP this year has access to a lot of the content with the exam code... though not everything I don’t think.

[madteaparty]

6 hours ago, Farrar said:

Yes. My student taking an AP this year has access to a lot of the content with the exam code... though not everything I don’t think.

Yes mine too, stuff the teacher (me for one class, the online provider for another) assigns him. I don’t think the student can access the huge bank of problems like the teacher can. But it’s true I’m a college board newbie so maybe we are missing out. 

[Lilaclady]

There are lots of changes now with AP’s each student that will be taking the exam needs to be registered with college board and assigned to a class and and an exam. They do not need to take advantage of the class but it is useful. It has a lot of practice tests and exams that the coordinator can assign. 
the main advantage with AP is that it is standardized so colleges know what the content is supposed to cover and they can choose to accept it or not. Dual enrolled classes are not standardized so a good class in one college may  not be up to par in another so some colleges won’t accept dual enrolled classes. 

[Garga]

Nm

Edited December 10, 2019 by Garga