Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

Kelsey,

Please don't take this the wrong way, but many of the things you listed are logistical items that can and should be delegated by a student if he or she feels the need to study more. In fact, things like travel, in my opinion, should be handled more by parents/advisors/coaches anyway. Students generally don't need that kind of load on their shoulders on top of AP classes. If you are doing something critically important on the team instead of preparing for an AP exam that you know you need to prepare for, or even cutting study time in half in order to work on both, then you must reassess your priorities and focus on school. Delegate your work to students, and especially mentors who are there to help you, who don't have other academic burdens. Your career right now is considered "student," robotics is simply an "activity." Career > Activity/Hobby. For those students who take FIRST way too seriously, they may sometimes let it interfere with being a student first, something that I personally really frown upon. Take FRC and FIRST a little less seriously, its just a game. A lot of kids find their niche in FRC and become very attached to it, but sometimes some of these students really need a reality adjustment and a reminder that currently, their priority in life should really be grades, GPA's, friends, and family. There's always time later on for passions like FRC.

Again, I'm one of the people that does not find difficulty in choosing priorities, if need be. But it does have to be said that if you do know that you need to study, then simply delegate your role on the team and let your mentors know that you will need help or a break from the team during exam week and the week prior.

+$0.02 Just one insomniac's opinion.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

If you're smart enough to really place out of a college class, the AP exam will be a breeze, and, even if you could get a 4 or 5 on an AP exam, you'll still want to take the classes again in college to get an easy A and to reinforce your academic fundamentals.

Also...

FIRST championships are usually a once- or twice-in-a-lifetime event for most students, and if your team has the ability to go, you should. School is important, but it's just an AP exam, and it should not prevent your team from participating in something as exhilarating, enjoyable, and unique as a FIRST championship.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

For some people using the AP credit in college may be the right move, however I personally am extremely grateful I chose not to. It gave me a chance to get used to a college schedule while learning material I was already familiar with. It allowed me to really get acclimated to the atmosphere of college classes. Many students I knew struggled with the first few classes and I would guess only about 40-50% of the students that started as engineers in my class freshman year graduated with me.

Like I said it may not be right for everyone, but its something to consider once your heading towards college.

EDIT: For clarity, I am referring to classes that are in your direct curriculum. So for engineers, calculus, physics, chemistry etc.

-Brando

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

Classes I could have done without in college as an Electrical Engineer at Georgia Tech:

• Psychology (the epitome of a chaotic cycle of conundrums that are never solved )
• U.S. History (it happened one way in high school; it still happened the same way in college)
• U.S. Government (Too centric on historical implications on current law; If I wanted to become lawyer I wouldn't have chosen EE)
• World Literature (True, I'm a terrible communicator in many respects -- but 1,000 years of historical literature in 3 months cannot fix that)
• Calculus I (was everything I learned in [non-AP] high school Calculus)

That's an entire semester of credits! Oh the things I could have done with an extra three months of time during college (perhaps studied abroad in Lorraine, France)! I would have much rather taken an AP Exam and exempted out of those classes (bear in mind that I've been really good at Math since a very young age, so YMMV).

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

That sounds like a very unfortunate curriculum, clearly a repeat of HS, which was not my experience at all. I also had the fortunate circumstance of being taught Chemistry 101 and Calculus I and II by the chairs of those respective departments, who were very rigorous professors and definitely expanded outside of the AP topic coverage. My humanities classes covered subjects not typically available in HS classes, so they were at least new material, and we were allowed a choice of several topics for almost every semester, including fun topics like "the history of technology".

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

Georgia Tech is bound by the Georgia Board of Regent's "Liberal Arts" clause, meaning that even the most technical of colleges in GA must conform to the set curricula of the State. The tradeoff is that for Georgia residents with a B or better GPA, tuition is free. Those classes only applied to the first 2 years anyways; the latter half of college was at least an order of magnitude more interesting (and difficult).

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

That is a good reason :D

One of my best professors went to Georgia Tech, Scott Bondi, but I digress...

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

I agree that most AP exams are breeze-like for those who should really be receiving the credit. I actually slept quite a bit during the AP Gov exam and got a 5. (Napped in Calc too, if I recall correctly.) However, I can't say I was a big fan of re-taking courses I could skip.

Like JesseK, I've found there are many more interesting opportunities in college to pursue in that time. The year's-worth of credits I came in with (and the ~8 extra I take a semester) have given me a lot of very interesting flexibility--several STEM & non-STEM minors/certs and great study abroad opportunities, even with an ROTC, robotics and band. Just something to think about.

There's a balance between how fast you want to go and how much (and well) you want to get done [s(t)=int(v(t) dt)]. It's different for everyone, but it's definitely worth considering. Then again, honors composition was one of the best college courses I've taken, so I'm pretty glad my school won't take AP credit for it. YMMV

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

I understand your point, but can you afford to pay (in both money and time) to take a class when you have already received credit for it?

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

He has a valid point, many of my peers who placed out of calc and physics classes got ahead for a quarter, then quickly very behind when they found their "college level physics/calc/etc..." didn't really prepare them for college level.

It's "cheaper" to take a class you don't need and pass it then fail the next and have to retake it.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

I haven't really seen this discussed yet in this thread, but in my opinion High School and especially extracurriculars are not only about the knowledge that you gain, but the memories and experiences that you have the opportunity to have. The Championship event is always a memorable one. You get to meet (most) all the people you read about here, see old friends, and see some of the best matches of the regular competition season. But moreso for this next year the championship event is sure to be even better than ever! It's the 20th Anniversary of FIRST and will also be host in a new city that seems to be very excited about this new partnership.

Obviously you need to take into account the academic effects and stresses it would cause, but I think you should also look at the positives of attending.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

I was thinking the much same thing, earlier this week. So you skip over most of your general education or breadth requirements or some of your basic math/science courses at the cost of getting hit with your sophomore classes earlier. (And I don't think it's just at SDSM&T that the freshmen who complain about homework are told, "just wait until next year, freshman--you don't know how easy you have it"!) If you can't handle the sudden slam of homework, made worse by not being used to the routine and taking "easy" classes while still high school, then testing out of them, then maybe the AP wasn't such a great idea.

I know that I probably couldn't have handled that. I actually retook both Calc 1 and Calc 2, in that order, because I wanted to a) raise my grade in both and b) make sure I knew the material thoroughly. (Unexpected bonuses: got the book for Calc 3 by taking them and confused a professor at the start of the school year.) At the same time, I took a full load of general education courses to help get into the rhythm of college life. It helped a bit.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

For some schools/majors/courses, your AP credit might be accepted and be enough (which means do take the exams seriously!), but this isn't true for all courses. The best bet is probably to talk to your advisor to get their advice on which classes you should probably retake, and which ones you don't need to. I say this because going against my advisor's and MIT's advice about which math course to take my freshman fall was probably my biggest academic mistake in college thus far - learn from my mistakes.

(MIT's advice for incoming freshmen is that if you got a 4 or a 5 on the BC Calc exam, you should skip single-variable calculus and go straight into multi-variable calculus. I was qualified to get the credit, but figured MIT is really hard, and maybe I didn't actually know the material as well as I thought I did. I went against the advice of MIT and my freshman advisor, and signed up for an accelerated course that reviewed single-variable and then taught all of multi-variable before the spring semester. It was a mistake- I was bored out of my mind during the review, and got nothing out of it. Then when multi-variable came around, it was all new material an accelerated pace which was just a little too much for me to handle. I would have learned the material better if I took their advice and went straight into multi-variable and learned it at a normal pace. Also, the A I got in single-variable didn't even count for anything... our first semester grades are hidden.)

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

to revive a thread......anyone having issues with significant numbers of team members not attending championships because of the AP exams? It is not all about the studying, more about the level of exhaustion and make up work in other classes that have some concerned. Just curious about other's experiences.

Re: To go to Championships...or not....
 

Given we are going to a "late" FRC regional this year and we have some students going to the VRC championships the following week, we negotiated with our principal that we would only go to Championships if we managed to win our Regional.

Otherwise our April would look like:
Week #1: Regional
Week #2: VRC Championship
Week #3: Spring Break
Week #4: FRC Championship

Our principal wasn't really happy about the missed class time prospects