Comparing AP Physics C to College Intro Physics Courses

[Josh0768]

To the people who took AP Physics C in high school and then took the introductory Calc-based physics sequence in college; how does Physics C compare to the Intro Sequence?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Given that the degree of difficulty has a huge variation across colleges, and a smaller but still substantial variation across high schools, I am not certain that any answers you get will be the answers you need.

 

[jasonRF]

I agree with Vanadium 50 - it depends.
One thing for sure is that some universities cover more than just mechanics in first semester physics; thermodynamics, for example, can often be found in such courses. So a 5 on the AP physics C Mechanics exam may give you credit for that class, but you actually will not have learned all of the material. This was certainly true where I went to college, where we also learned some very elementary concepts from statistical physics that subsequent courses assumed students would know.

For a given college, it is easy to find out if this is the case.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I agree with the above. The calc-based physics I had in college was much different from the calc-based physics that was taught at the community college where I served on the faculty which was much different from the calc-based physics at the Air Force Academy. I am mentoring two physics majors at a big state school in the south whose calc-based sequence is close to the one I had in college in the 1980s. But there is another calc-based sequence at the same university that is much different.

Over the past decade or two AP Physics C has been evolving in most implementations to be much closer to teaching to the test than I've ever seen in ANY college calc-based sequence. College sequences tend to conform to the teachers' view of "what these students need to really know." For example, at the Air Force Academy, they are training Air Force officers and there is a specific list of downstream engineering courses all or most of the students will take later at the Air Force Academy. At many places, the sequence taken by most Physics majors is designed for Physics majors, where the sequence taken by engineering majors (at engineering schools) has lots of features specific to that.

Also very common at some schools, is the dumbing down of the course to make sure 80-90% pass the course on the first try whether or not they do any homework. These are the versions that are much easier than a decent AP Physics C course where passing course grades are highly correlated with 3s, 4s, and 5s on the AP test.

 

[stephen8686]

I am an undergraduate who took AP Physics C mechanics and taught myself AP Physics C E&M in high school.

Like many answers have already mentioned, it greatly depends on the college. Some colleges have relatively easy intro physics courses while others can be much more in depth than the AP tests go. For your average state school with an average physics program, I would make the claim that a high school student should be confident passing out of the introductory mechanics/e&m courses iff:
1. The student received a 5 on the AP test.
2. The student has looked over the college course's syllabus/curriculum and has covered all of it.
3. The student feels that he/she has a very strong understanding of the material, especially the calc based parts.
If all three conditions are satisfied, I think you'll be fine. But this definitely changes based on college, for highly competitive STEM colleges I'm not sure it would be a good idea to pass out.
When in doubt, it is also always a good idea to talk to the professor of the course, maybe he/she could give you a copy of a past exam that you could then gauge your preparedness on.