NationStates Jolt Archive

As for me I took A.P. U.S. Gov/Pol, A.P. Euro History, Environmental Science, Psychology, Music Theory, English, and one I cannot remember.

None, I was lazy, and out of school too often to keep up.

I took chemistry, biology, calculus a/b, and statistics. I got 4's on all of them except statistics, which was a 3. I took regular music theory, but we were taught with the music theory AP class and at the same difficulty level. The only difference was that we didn't take the AP test, which was probably a good thing since I failed all of my practice AP tests for it.

English 11
English 12
US History
Biology
Spanish
Calculus

Seems tough, but it's worth it once you get to college. I practically knocked out a year of basic courses.

I don't think they had AP classes when I was in school, or maybe they just didn't call them that. I think I remember taking Advanced Pteranodon Hunting back in the day, or maybe it was that seminar in Chipping Wheels: Round versus Square. It's been a while.

English 11
English 12
US History
Biology
Spanish
Calculus

Seems tough, but it's worth it once you get to college. I practically knocked out a year of basic courses.

I would've too, but I'm trying to get into pharmacy school, so I have to take calculus, biology, and chemistry again...

They don't have AP classes for high school freshmen lke me.

AP US, AP Euro, AP Macroeconomics, AP Calc and AP Government.

I took somewhere around eight or nine. Both English tests, both French tests, chemistry, physics BC, calculus AB, US history, and...I think I'm forgetting something, but I'm not sure what. It's been a while. ;)

My school was boring. No Armour Piercing classes anywhere.

My school was boring. No Armour Piercing classes anywhere.

:p Armor Pircing Calculus? :D

My school only had A.P. classes for senior year.

I dropped out before I got that far.

I took AB Stat and US History last year. THis year I started to take AB AP Calc, Logic and Composition, and Micro and Macro Econ (one class for both tests). I was also taking Japanese 201 at a local college. But my new school only offers AP Calc, so that's the only one I'm taking now, and the only AP test I'll take this year.

Oh jeez. APs. I took:
Calculus
Chemistry
English Language and Composition
Macroeconomics
Microeconomics
Statistics
U.S. History

My last year of high school was fun. Four straight days of APs.

What are these 'A.P' classes you speak of?

What the hell are A.P. classes?

Right now I have AP US history. Will take AP Euro and AP Calc next year.

It seems light, but I plan to major in History anyway,.

What are these 'A.P' classes you speak of?

Advanced Placement...

Unless you were joking and didn't take them in HS. :p

Advanced Placement...

Unless you were joking and didn't take them in HS. :p
Us Australians don't have them. Is there an Advanced Placement Calculus and a regular Calculus or just Advanced Placement Calculus?

Us Australians don't have them. Is there an Advanced Placement Calculus and a regular Calculus or just Advanced Placement Calculus?

Usually you got an AP level, an Honors level, and a regular level.

Calc at my school is either AP or regular.

Freshman Year:

AP Human Geography- got a 4 on the exam

Sophomore Year:

none available

Junior (current) year:

AP English Language
AP Latin Literature
AP Psychology
AP US History
AP Chemistry

Senior (next) year:

AP Calculus
AP Statistics
AP English Literature
AP US Government
AP Latin Vergil
AP Physics
AP Biology

AP? I just figured there'd be enough time in college for college, and I was right. In fact, do as little as possible to "rush through" the glorious undergrad experience. After all, the fun doesn't really start till you turn 21.

so what does Advanced Placement mean?

We don't have such a kooky system, so no can relate.

so what does Advanced Placement mean?

Those are high-school courses taught at college level, usually in the junior and senior years. They're standardized, so colleges will accept a passing grade from an AP course for credit hours. I took AP English, Biology, American history, and US Government, passed them all and entered the local university with 18 credit hours.

I prefer AP food, myself. This morning I had AP bacon and eggs with two slices of AP toast and a side of AP baked beans for breakfast. The AP coffee was quite good, although we'd run out of AP sweetener. That didn't phaze me though - I just used some AP Irish Cream instead. Mmm-mmm AP-tasty treat.

so what does Advanced Placement mean?

It means that you take a course that's supposed to be college-level, you take an exam about it at the end of the year, and if you get a score of 3 or higher on the scale of 1 to 5 your college or university can give you credits and/or advanced standing for it.

Usually you got an AP level, an Honors level, and a regular level.

Calc at my school is either AP or regular.

It's only offered as AP Calculus. If someone's not at the level to take AP Calculus at my school, they wouldn't be interested in taking calculus in high school anyway. They'd probably be taking college algebra, AP Statistics, or no math at all (it's only a requirement through Algebra II, well, technically only through geometry if they took algebra 1 as a two year course).

so what does Advanced Placement mean?

In high school you have academic, honors, and AP classes... AP is the highest you can get, but for some reason AP is harder in the junior year than the senior year... or so I hear from every junior and senior I know.

AP basically means you're too smart for honors classes.

Those are high-school courses taught at college level, usually in the junior and senior years. They're standardized, so colleges will accept a passing grade from an AP course for credit hours. I took AP English, Biology, American history, and US Government, passed them all and entered the local university with 18 credit hours.

ah, nothing like that in the England and Wales education curriculum that i went through. not that i noticed anyway. i just did the bare minimum, well, after my 13 GCSEs that is, and they weren't voluntary.

So when you are competing with others to get into college, does it matter if you have taken AP or HP courses or do they just look at your grades and don't care about the level of the courses you've taken?

We don't have such a kooky system, so no can relate.Indeed.

I like "kooky".

So when you are competing with others to get into college, does it matter if you have taken AP or HP courses or do they just look at your grades and don't care about the level of the courses you've taken?

They weight AP courses higher than honors courses and honors courses higher than regular courses, I believe, when recalculating your GPA. It probably varies from college to college, and I think AP courses do help people get in to colleges.

So when you are competing with others to get into college, does it matter if you have taken AP or HP courses or do they just look at your grades and don't care about the level of the courses you've taken?Having worked in college admissions, I can tell you that at least some universities are wary of A.P. credits.

While the A.P. system is billed as providing high school students classes "at the college level," what this actually means is that the course content is roughly equivalent to the content taught in a college class.

The problem is that there is really no substitute for a college professor--that is, an instructor with a graduate education in the field under investigation. A university professor (even one who's not particularly good at teaching) is more likely to have extensive knowledge outside the scope of textbooks, to understand multiple approaches to learning material, to be able to connect course content to broader themes and issues.

Moreover, the extra year of maturity often makes a dramatic difference in a student's ability to comprehend and apply the material that they learn.

The sum of these shortcomings in A.P. courses is that while students may be allowed to skip certain university courses, they rarely get an education as good as what they would have received by just taking the courses in college. In fact, we find that students who skip a prerequisite to a college course using A.P. credit (advancing, say, to Calculus II by taking A.P. Calculus I in high school) tend to do worse than other students, even when other factors suggest that they are more talented as a whole.

I no longer work in admissions; now I teach at the university level. When students ask me whether to apply their A.P. credits, I usually tell them that if they can afford the cost they should just retake the classes at the university: if their A.P. class was as good as they think, the class should be a breeze, which benefits their GPA; and they are usually surprised at how much more they learn from a real professor than from a high school teacher.

If a student insists that he/she must apply at least some A.P. credits, I advise them to use them for general requirements rather than courses that would serve as prerequisites to more advanced study in a field. In other words, all math majors should take Calculus I, even if they had it in high school. All English majors should take first-year English, even if they passed an A.P. exam.

I have taken English Language and Composition, Economics, Government, World History, Physics, Biology, and Aquatics. I plan to take Spanish and Chemistry as well as Calculus next semester.

None because I'll fail out in a week.

English 11
English 12*
US History
World History
Chemistry*
Calculus BC*

*taking this year

The only ones I didn't take were Calc AB, Environmental Science, and Psychology (at my school).

I tried to take 6, but the counseling office fucked over my schedule, so I took 3.

AP US (5)
AP Gov (Taking it in a month)
AP Environmental Science (5)

I also wanted to take AP Euro, AP Comp Sci, and AP Lit. Comp (both English courses in one), but no such luck.

It's fine, I'm going into college with my Humanities and Earth Science requirements waived, and my 100 course in my major done.

Took a significant number of classes.

Junior Year:
Biology, Calc AB, English Lang, US politics, Macroeconomics, Physics C Mech

Senior Year:
English Lit, Calc BC, US History, Physics E&M, Statistics.

I also took some AP tests on the side without classes:
Chemistry, Computer Sci A, Microeconomics, Comparative Politics, Psychology.

I did alright through this. I averaged a somewhat above a 4 on average.

AP Lunch

AP: World History, Macroeconomics, US History, Microeconomics, English Literature and Composition, European History, US Government

All of them will be used to get out of general education courses.

High school is a holding pen. I tested out of high school went to community college and eventually got my masters degree. AP is nonsense. A college professor, even at the community college level usually has much deeper knowledge of the subject than a high school teacher. Teaching by putting in false standards and filling in bubbles on paper is basically useless.

I took AP Euro, AP US, and AP chem. That combined with some proficiency tests in college, I began at the same level as a sophomore.

None. My school only offers AP classes for science students. But I've taken Enriched English, Enriched Math, and a course that is basically Enriched Acting, we just don't call it that (entrance by audition, with only the top performers in the school getting in).

High school is a holding pen. I tested out of high school went to community college and eventually got my masters degree. AP is nonsense. A college professor, even at the community college level usually has much deeper knowledge of the subject than a high school teacher. Teaching by putting in false standards and filling in bubbles on paper is basically useless.

Some of my teachers aren't very good, but a lot of them are really great. My Latin teacher, for example, has a PhD and is an expert on languages (she teaches Latin, French, and English and knows several other languages in addition to those) and is also a wonderful teacher who has taught at colleges before. My chemistry teacher really seems to know what she's doing. My trig teacher, who is a community college teacher (my trig class actually has me dual-enrolled with the community college) isn't so great as either of those two. I'm sure that that's something that varies. I'm going to retake the classes that are relevant to my major, which will be chemistry, but for others I'll basically use them to get credit for the basic requirements.

6

Aquatics.

What?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement_Exams
Not on the list.

Thus far, no. And I do not plan on taking any. I'm already doing bad enough in school.

My old AP Statistics teacher once commented, the Advanced Placement program at my old high school was like a "school within a school". And she was right.

Suppose you entered the AP Calculus classes, or heck, just the Pre-AP PreCalculus classes. The atmosphere you entered was completely different from that you saw in the regular classes. The students were far more focused, intent on learning as much as they possibly could, paying much more attention to the teacher and the notes she was giving out, and regularly going to tutoring if they needed help.... And sadly, even a major change in the class' demographics: if I remember correctly, the vast majority of my AP Calculus BC class was White or Asian (Indian, Chinese/other East Asian descent).

Kind of sad, but most of those students wouldn't have been satisfied in a regular class. It was a haven, really; in those classes, I was with my real peers, people who were similarly interested in getting the most out of the only "free" education they would receive in our lives.

Yeah, we definitely were more focused on learning everything we possibly could before the day of the big test, but we also had a lot of fun on the way. Especially in my AP Stat class: our teacher was best described as "kickass". When we were done with the AP test and had almost nothing else to do for the last few days, she whipped out her Krypto decks, told us to keep it down, and let us have some (educational) fun.

That said, I took the following AP classes.

World History
American History
Computer Science 2
Calculus BC
Statistics

I don't think they had AP classes when I was in school, or maybe they just didn't call them that. I think I remember taking Advanced Pteranodon Hunting back in the day, or maybe it was that seminar in Chipping Wheels: Round versus Square. It's been a while.

C'mon-I've been out over 20 years and took AP Biology and English back then.

As for me I took A.P. U.S. Gov/Pol, A.P. Euro History, Environmental Science, Psychology, Music Theory, English, and one I cannot remember.
English, Lit, American History, Calc AB, Calc BC, Psych. There was no AP Chem or Physics, or I would have taken those.

A.P. Class?

EDIT - advanced placement class then; someone mind elaborating?

I didn't take AP, I took 6 OACs*...

Canadian Lit
Writer's Craft
English
Economics
World Issues
Law

* These no longer exist thanks to the Harris government which of rid of them 2 years after I finished my secondary education.

A.P. Class?

EDIT - advanced placement class then; someone mind elaborating?
AP exams are intended to allow high school students to earn college credits ahead of time. If you take an AP exam and score well enough, colleges will usually give you credit for it as though you'd taken an intro-level college class in that subject. Lots of schools will allow you to get out of some required courses if you took the right AP class in high school.

For instance, I didn't have to take the required English 101 course at my college, because I scored a 5 on my English Lit AP exam. My basic math requirement was likewise taken care of by my Calc AP scores. In effect, I got some college credits for free! Considering how expensive college is these days, I was very happy with this system.

AP exams are intended to allow high school students to earn college credits ahead of time. If you take an AP exam and score well enough, colleges will usually give you credit for it as though you'd taken an intro-level college class in that subject. Lots of schools will allow you to get out of some required courses if you took the right AP class in high school.

For instance, I didn't have to take the required English 101 course at my college, because I scored a 5 on my English Lit AP exam. My basic math requirement was likewise taken care of by my Calc AP scores. In effect, I got some college credits for free! Considering how expensive college is these days, I was very happy with this system.

Ah, some high schools do have a system like that, but to my knowledge, it's generally only open to ones that are affiliated with the universities in question. My school wasn't offering anything of the sort.

I did finish high school a year earlier than most of my peers, however, and completed one class a further year ahead. (I was 16, most people taking it were 18). Nothing to really brag about, however.

I think I took something like four AP Courses...I don't fully recall though. I do know I took three exams, with my lowest score being a three on the German and my highest being fives on History and American Government.

I would have gone for AP English and AP Physics, but junior year I had some severe fears of senioritis, so I opted for merely "honors" courses, rather than the more rigorous AP classes. Of course, for English I wound up with the AP English teacher, so she gave us a nearly identical curriculum as what the AP students got, and Honors Physics was a terrible sausage fest. Twenty guys and no girls. *shudders*

That'll teach me for slacking.