Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
AP classes, IMO, are great if one wants a harder class or wants to see what college classes are like. They're TERRIBLE for replacing a college course. Don't do an AP Calc, Chem, or Physics class in high school and expect that you'll know even half of everything you'd get out of a good college's Calc I, Physics I, or Chem I class. As an engineer or scientist, this really only sets you up for failure in the follow-up courses.
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For the most part I'd agree with this, but it really depends on the quality of your AP teacher, as well as on what you plan to study in college.
For example, I took AP Calculus BC in high school. My teacher was fantastic. He always went well beyond the explanations and examples expected for the AP curriculum; he truly wanted us to understand how to apply what we were learning, how it worked, and how it was derived from other principles we knew. He loved showing us special tricks and applications. His enthusiasm and passion for math was contagious. Even though I knew he was a terrific teacher and I felt I had a solid grip on calculus after his class, I wasn't sure if that would be good enough for MIT. I decided to enroll in the math sequence that does a six-week review of single-variable, and then goes on to all of vector/multi-variable calculus for the rest of the semester. It turns out that even with MIT's rigor, I learned nothing in the first six weeks of class, because I had already learned it in my high school AP class. Maybe my class was exceptional. But I do think that it's worth it to use your AP credit if you truly have a good grasp on the subject... or if you don't plan to use the subject extensively. For example, I got a 5 on the AP French exam. I'm an engineer, not a French major, so I'm going to use that as a sign that I don't have to retake French III and IV here to make sure I remember every single verb conjugation 100%.
As for a school's merit being based off of their AP/IB offerings and results, I think it's a somewhat arbitrary criterion. Some schools which may not offer AP/IB courses may have equally or even further challenging offerings, but they choose not to buy into the AP thing. Though companies like CollegeBoard try not to advertise this, the standardized test industry is a lot about profit, and not necessarily about a solid education.
Furthermore, high scores on AP tests don't necessarily correlate to a good grasp of the subject matter, or ability to apply it in the real world. Scoring well on certain AP exams or other standardized tests corresponds to a lot of "memorization" of facts, or learning how to tailor your formatting to their expectations for high scores. Not scoring well on standardized tests doesn't necessarily mean that you don't understand a subject or can't apply yourself in the real world. Some people who may get nervous on tests or take longer than the allotted time, but may be able build a beautifully functional robot with structural integrity which solves a problem well, and explain all of the physics in it even if they bombed their AP physics exam.
I am by no means trying to take away from the merit of the schools on the list. They certainly all offer a comprehensive and high-quality education to their students. I am just trying to point out that in some cases, there may be more than meets the eye. Maybe other schools who are also terrific are getting overlooked because they don't offer AP/IB courses.