frankincense Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 I'm investigating the possibility of teaching one of the following at home: AP US History, AP European History, or AP Lit. I saw on the College Board's page re: homeschool providers of AP courses that there's an option to adopt an approved course plan/syllabus vs. submitting your own homegrown one. I'm up for the work of teaching/shepherding my student through an AP class, but not up for creating an entirely original syllabus from scratch. Has anyone applied for course audit to be able to use the AP designation at home and downloaded/purchased a course plan? If so, where could I find options? Appreciate any guidance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 After you set up your AP Course Audit account and add your courses, go to each course and choose pick an approved syllabus. Usually there is two to four approved syllabus to pick from and you could download all the available approved syllabus before choosing one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankincense Posted March 23, 2022 Author Share Posted March 23, 2022 Thank you very much! I hadn't established the account yet so didn't see this option. I really appreciate the help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 Just a comment, for those who may not be aware: You can teach an AP course without approved syllabus; you just may not label it "AP US History". You may, however, label the course "US History with AP exam". In the end, the exam score is what really counts. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilaclady Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 2 minutes ago, regentrude said: Just a comment, for those who may not be aware: You can teach an AP course without approved syllabus; you just may not label it "AP US History". You may, however, label the course "US History with AP exam". In the end, the exam score is what really counts. I think this has been addressed recently. For some colleges- the course itself matters. They want to see an AP accredited course and not just a score. The score is used for weighing GPA and counts especially in getting merit scholarships. There is no one size fits all in college admissions 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 For many colleges, the course itself matters just as much if not more. I would even say for the vast majority. And some students are always going to struggle with tests but may be fine to tackle the material. Not to mention that things can go wrong with the AP test - you can't predict that it'll happen the week a tornado destroys your house (like, let's hope not, but you get the idea - illness, first love breakup, pandemic... you know, common stuff... it happens, as do just plain "off" days where a kid who knows it bombs the test). So it's also a good hedge of your bets. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 1 hour ago, Farrar said: For many colleges, the course itself matters just as much if not more. I would even say for the vast majority. And some students are always going to struggle with tests but may be fine to tackle the material Well, I think the "vast majority" of colleges doesn't care one way or the other because they take any student who is breathing and has some semblance of a highschoool transcript.... My question: I recall discussions a while back when my kids were applying that just a home-taught course but a lack of AP exam/poor score on the exam does raise red flags for colleges. Is that no longer the case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 33 minutes ago, regentrude said: Well, I think the "vast majority" of colleges doesn't care one way or the other because they take any student who is breathing and has some semblance of a highschoool transcript.... My question: I recall discussions a while back when my kids were applying that just a home-taught course but a lack of AP exam/poor score on the exam does raise red flags for colleges. Is that no longer the case? Well, yeah. Any time we're talking about what a college cares about, unless it's to be allowed to be considered for admission at all, I assume it's somewhere with some level of competition for entry. Lack of score definitely does not raise a red flag. And why would you report a bad score at all? Just don't report it. They know that success on the test and in the course are two totally different things - just like your GPA and your SAT score are measuring different things. Plus so many homeschoolers have limited access to exam sites. And on top of that, many students take AP's senior year - admissions will never see those scores. Really, it's all good. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kokotg Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 FWIW, I checked with admissions at a university my kid was applying to that recalculates GPAs, weighting AP classes, and they told me that they would re-weight classes on a transcript that said "with AP exam" the same as AP classes. That said, it's really easy to adopt a syllabus and get a course approved, so I don't know of any reason not to do that if you're teaching one at home. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 52 minutes ago, kokotg said: FWIW, I checked with admissions at a university my kid was applying to that recalculates GPAs, weighting AP classes, and they told me that they would re-weight classes on a transcript that said "with AP exam" the same as AP classes. That said, it's really easy to adopt a syllabus and get a course approved, so I don't know of any reason not to do that if you're teaching one at home. The ease of getting a course approved says to me that you should just do it. I mean, if the exam goes awry, then you still get to use the AP designation, whereas you can't really if you don't have the exam. It seems like such a no brainer to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennyD Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 1 hour ago, Farrar said: Plus so many homeschoolers have limited access to exam sites. This is such a problem. OP, I did APUSH at home with my oldest DS this year and it's been great. The AP course audit process is extremely easy -- you will have to set up an account and verify that you're a homeschooler, but then there is an option to just aver that you have read the course guide and sample syllabus, and then you're good to go. There are a number of good textbooks on the approved list and I have found the APUSH structure and resources to be very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CAtoVA Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 I hope this isn't a dumb question but....how do you set up an account as a homeschooler? It seemed to me that a person had to be an "educator" at some "actual" school in order to set up an AP Course Audit account. Did I miss something somewhere (probably....)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennyD Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 Here's the registration process for homeschoolers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CAtoVA Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 (edited) Thanks. The problem is I cannot seem to find a place to add "Home School Provider" to the create account information. When I try to create an account I am not given that option. From the College Board: If you are a homeschool educator wishing to label your courses “AP,” you can create an account on the AP Course Audit homepage by clicking the Create Account Now link, then selecting Home School Provider. Once you have created an account, you will be able to submit your Course Audit materials. Homeschool educators with authorized courses offered by online providers can select the course by clicking Add OLP in their course audit account. I wrote an email to the CB because there is no place (that I can see anyway) to indicate that my position is Home School Provider. I am awaiting their response. Edited March 25, 2022 by CAtoVA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankincense Posted March 25, 2022 Author Share Posted March 25, 2022 I found the account creation process a little confusing at first. Have you downloaded the AP Course Audit User Guide? It walks you through the course audit process step by step, including account creation. I definitely recommend reading through it as you go through the website: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-course-audit/explore-by-role/homeschool-providers-ap-courses Using the instructions at the above link, when you reach page 5 under "AP Course Audit" you'll be prompted to enter your job function and a US zip code. The instructions state that you should enter your home state in the "Professional Organization" field. I found that once I entered my zip code, a pre-populated list of schools in that zip code appeared. Obviously a homeschool isn't going to appear on that list, and I was stuck in an endless loop, unable to proceed. I finally saw that there was a listing for my home state (2-letter abbreviation - ex: NV) along with an address, which turned out to be the address of the state dept of education. Once I selected that as the Professional Organization, I was able to proceed. It took me about 25 tries and calling the College Board (who couldn't answer my question, but patiently waited through my trial and error) before I finally stumbled on this. Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankincense Posted March 25, 2022 Author Share Posted March 25, 2022 And thank you all so much for all of the information on this topic! I decided to proceed with complete an AP course at home on our own using the above steps. I never would have know this option even existed without input from all of you. This forum is so helpful!!! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 (edited) On 3/23/2022 at 10:10 AM, regentrude said: Just a comment, for those who may not be aware: You can teach an AP course without approved syllabus; you just may not label it "AP US History". You may, however, label the course "US History with AP exam". In the end, the exam score is what really counts. This. Another thing you can do is call the course "advanced." I did this for all of the homegrown courses we did that were at the college level. ETA: I should mention that I didn't use the word "advanced" in the title of the courses. I just had a code that designated them that way. Edited March 25, 2022 by EKS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucy the Valiant Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 When we did AP Lit at home, I modified one of the pre-approved syllabi; it worked out great, and was surprisingly easy. (Much easier than finding a seat for the exam.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malam Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 On 3/25/2022 at 1:53 PM, EKS said: This. Another thing you can do is call the course "advanced." I did this for all of the homegrown courses we did that were at the college level. ETA: I should mention that I didn't use the word "advanced" in the title of the courses. I just had a code that designated them that way. Can you explain a bit more about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Malam said: Can you explain a bit more about this? My son's transcript had a series of codes that gave more information about the nature of the course. A was for advanced course using college-level resources, P was for an Advanced Placement course, C was college-level course for which college credit was received, M was high school course taken in middle school, and L indicated a course that included substantial laboratory or field work. The codes were listed in a column titled "code." There was another column for "location," which indicated where the course was taken (home or a particular institution). A non-AP advanced course would got the code A. An AP course course was both advanced and advanced placement and got the codes A and P, or AP. An AP lab course would have the codes APL. A college course taken at the CC got the code C. Edited March 28, 2022 by EKS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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