AP tests

[angus]

Forgot to ensure college credit was rewarded?

That's not a "mess up."  College credit should never be rewarded for any AP test.

Not that AP classes aren't good.  I'm a big supporter of the system, because "advanced placement" courses are taught at a level that American high school students should be taking, but they are certainly not a decent replacement for university-level classes, regardless of what your councilors may tell you.

I intend to have my son take every AP course offered when he's old enough.  But I certainly won't advise him to try to opt out of the fine education that our great universities offer.  Remember, our universities attract students from all over the world.  They're wonderful and great.  If you look on any list of the top ten universities of the world, US institutions comprise about 6 to 8 of them, depending on the list.  But our high schools?  Do they come from all over the world to attend them?  They do not.  Even our best high schools are poorly performing.  We offer what we should be offering to any science-bound student something called "advanced placement" calculus or physics or chemistry, when in reality those are the exact courses that in most societies any science-bound student would be taking by the age of 15 or 16 as a matter of ordinary ciriculum, and those students don't hope to "opt out" of their studies in Freshman math, chemistry, or physics when they arrive at MIT or Stanford.  And it's exactly why our own students do so poorly.  Some administrator tells them, "oh, go on and take Organic Chemistry because you have already had the equivalent of General Chemistry I and II"  Bullshit!  You have not.  You have had what passes for high-school courses in much of the developed and underdeveloped world when you take "advanced placement" courses.   

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I hope you all take AP classes, and I hope you all score a 5 in all of them.  But do yourself a favor and enroll in all the courses, not only in your major but also in the core curriculum.  Don't try to cut corners in your university education.  Unless your folks are poor, plan on spending at least 4 years in university and enjoying them.  Those are great years.  Exploit them.  Learn.  Get laid.  LIve a little.

And yes, Viceroy tb75, six years of high school spanish is less spanish than growing up in Spain from birth to the age of about7.  No doubt about that.  Don't let it get you down.  You take AP courses, hopefully, to learn.  Not to circumvent the system.  Enjoy your college years.  Don't skip them. 

[angus]

My high school was hardcore. My AP classes were a hell of a lot more challenging and rewarding than generic 101 in college.

Students always know what's best for them.  They always assume that they have a basis of comparison and a rational and informed and mature world-view.  This is as true about my kindergarten-age son as it is about my graduate students.  

I can assure you that your professors, by and large, do not consider your AP courses to be perfect substitutes for the courses that they teach.  There are some exceptions, I'm sure.  I myself taught AP calculus and AP chemistry, for two years, after obtaining an MS and before going back to grad school to obtain a PhD, and for a very long time I liked to think that any AP course I taught was as good as any freshman-level course being taught at universities.  But once I began teaching university-level courses I understood that this was not the case.

If it is your goal to blow through college in three years, either because of familial economic considerations or because you simply do not enjoy school or because you see education as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, then by all means you might consider applying AP coursework toward your BS degree.  But if you are a serious about learning, about making the most of your education, then I advise you not to apply your advanced placement coursework as a substitute for university-level education.

I hope I'm in sufficiently sound financial state in which I can encourage my own son to take advantage of his university's offerings, whatever they may be, once he reaches that point in his life.  Certainly I'll encourage him to take as many AP courses as he can handle, but I won't push him to actually take the AP exam, and if he chooses to, I won't push him to try to get credit in college for those exam scores just to save me money.  But parents do differ in their philosophies regarding what they should and shouldn't do, and I wouldn't tell someone else how to raise his children.

But as a university educator, I can assure you that you and your society are much better off appreciating and bragging about that 5 you scored, and hanging on to it, but ultimately enrolling in the all the minutiae of curriculum that your university bulletin suggests.  

[angus]

My high school was hardcore. My AP classes were a hell of a lot more challenging and rewarding than generic 101 in college.

Students always know what's best for them.  They always assume that they have a basis of comparison and a rational and informed and mature world-view.  This is as true about my kindergarten-age son as it is about my graduate students.  

I can assure you that your professors, by and large, do not consider your AP courses to be perfect substitutes for the courses that they teach.  There are some exceptions, I'm sure.  I myself taught AP calculus and AP chemistry, for two years, after obtaining an MS and before going back to grad school to obtain a PhD, and for a very long time I liked to think that any AP course I taught was as good as any freshman-level course being taught at universities.  But once I began teaching university-level courses I understood that this was not the case.

If it is your goal to blow through college in three years, either because of familial economic considerations or because you simply do not enjoy school or because you see education as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, then by all means you might consider applying AP coursework toward your BS degree.  But if you are a serious about learning, about making the most of your education, then I advise you not to apply your advanced placement coursework as a substitute for university-level education.

I hope I'm in financial state in which I can encourage my own son to take advantage of his university's offerings, whatever they may be, once he reaches that point in his life.  Certainly I'll encourage him to take as many AP courses as he can handle, but I won't push him to actually take the AP exam, and if he chooses to, I won't push him to try to get credit in college for those exam scores just to save me money.  But parents do differ in their philosophy regarding what they should and shouldn't do, and I wouldn't tell someone else how to raise his children.

But as a university educator, I can assure you that you are much better off appreciating and bragging about that 5 you scored, and hanging on to it, but ultimately enrolling in the curriculum that your university bulletin suggests.

I'm long through with school and I don't have any kids. I'm not a student, so I don't have a dog in this fight. However, you're way romanticizing college as an experience, greatly overestimating the quality of intro level classes at the average university, and completely discounting the outrageous price of college. If you're at Harvard, by all means, seriously consider if you're ready for the advanced class. However, if after passing an AP exam with a 4 or 5, you're at a state school (with a few exceptions, granted) save yourself the frustration of paying a thousand dollars to share what's essentially a remedial class with 100 hung over frat boys, half of whom shouldn't be at college in the first place. It really isn't that glamorous.
Oh and since everybody is bragging.
Eng Lang 4
US History 5
Eng Lang 5
Euro History 4
French 3

I'm not discounting the cost.  I'll admit that I'm naive.  My son is just about to start the first grade, so I really don't know what it's like to have a child come home and say, "Dad, I've been accepted into Princeton." and sit there not knowing whether to say, "Ah, great son." or beat my head wondering where I'm going to come up with the 150 thousand dollars to put him through four years of a private school.  We have started preparing for that, and like I said, I envision a smooth future, but you never know.  so at this point it's easy for me to say, "hey, don't take shortcuts."

Still, ignoring all that, and looking solely at the actual knowledge you gain from an "advanced placement" course, which in my opinion ought to be what any college-bound student deserves from the regular public courses in public high school, I'd say you're better off not opting out of those freshman-level courses.  I know not only from my own experiences with students who have placed out of freshman level courses, but also from many conversations with colleagues from all around the country, that they are not the good substitutes that the AP folks had hoped they would be.  

In the case of the physical sciences, it's mostly the empirical components that are missing.  Most high schools simply do not have the instrumentation and the computer software that you find in universities in the freshman-level science courses.  And that's the biggest deficiency that you see in sophomore-level students who have placed out of the freshman-level courses.  And that's becoming an even greater problem with the move toward emphasizing 'guided inquiry' style learring that has become fashionable in US freshman-level science courses.  But even before this, it was obvious, listening to physics and chemistry profs that I'd meet at Gordon conferences and such back when I was a grad student, that the general feeling was that the AP students were not as well prepared as their peers when they were placed in sophomore-level courses.  This is also the case, in my observation, when it comes to transfers from two-year colleges when they take junior-level university courses.  Not that we shouldn't admit them, but it's painfully obvious when I teach quantum mechanics who took three semesters of calculus here and who took them at Des Moines area Community College.  But that's a different issue and I'm not sure if there's an easy solution.  As for the AP issue, there's an easy solution.

It has been pointed out that there are many schools that will not give you credit for AP courses for your scores.  Good for them.  It is my desire that all schools would follow their lead.  Moreover, I think much of the pressure for Advanced placement comes from economic considerations.  It's a fact that many parents have a stake in getting their children through university as quickly as possible.  Tuition is costly, after all, and increasing faster than most other goods and services.  It's tremendous pressure to put on people.  I can't fault the parents for that, in and of itself, since I haven't walked a mile in their moccasins.  Yet.  But I have no doubt that their child's socialization and education, both formal and informal, suffers as a result of such pressure.  

I still say that if you can afford it, take it in stride.  I"m certainly not romanticizing the university experience.  It's a great time.  I would not want to shorten mine.  I loved college so much that I stayed in school even long after I graduated.  I realize that not everyone enjoys school as much as I, but it remains a fact that it devalues your school's reputation every time someone sends into the world claiming to possess the knowledge it professes, who hasn't internalized that knowledge because he or she has been convinced that he is just, as you say, "sitting through courses to satisfy some requirement."  Or, worse, not sitting through those courses.  

[angus]

Angus, work your way up to Princeton mang.  Don't uni profs kids get in free where they lecture?

um, don't tell nobody, but I'm not sure I want the boy going where I work.  No offense to anybody. 

Actually, where my wife works is probably a better school.  They don't pay their faculty as well, and the teaching load is awfully heavy, but it's a private school and they have 100% tuition reimbursement for the children of faculty.  So if we're still here 12 years from now, and have spent all our money on other pursuits, then that's an option.