- #1
Mirero
- 29
- 13
I was always aware that AP classes were, in general, not equivalent to their respective college courses, but I'm beginning to wonder if the gap is much larger than what I previously thought.
Many of my suite mates are engineers/physicists, and so most of them are taking the same physics classes together. One day when they were doing their homework, I found that a lot of them were stuck on the same question. It was a question that required them to find out, given a velocity function, the time at which velocity was at a maximum.
Normally I wouldn't mind this as much, as I know there are people who haven't taken calculus in high school yet. However, what shocked me was that all of them had taken, at the very least, AB Calculus, and have scored at minimum a 4 on the test. I would think that with such a background such a question would be an elementary exercise for them. There were other questions that some had trouble on, such as determining the direction of net acceleration of a person that, while in free-fall, started to suddenly slow down. I know this was not only in their case, as I saw over social media (Yik-Yak to be precise) people asking answers to similar questions.
To add my own experience, two things that stuck out like a sore thumb to me were my performances on my AP Bio and AP US History tests.
One of my friends was already a beginning researcher in biology, working with organisms such as C. Elegans since 9th grade and is considering a research track. I had nothing but a high school level knowledge of biology going into the test (Oh god the teacher was boring.) We both ended up getting a 4 on the exam, and it annoyed her to no end.
I didn't pay attention the entire year in my APUSH class and crammed the entire curriculum into a week with youtube videos. I somehow ended up getting a 5 on the test.
I will be the first to admit I don't know anything about these two subjects.
So I'm wondering what the general consensus is on this forum regarding the rigor of AP tests. Do they adequately prepare students for college level work? Or are they more there to pad college resumes?
Many of my suite mates are engineers/physicists, and so most of them are taking the same physics classes together. One day when they were doing their homework, I found that a lot of them were stuck on the same question. It was a question that required them to find out, given a velocity function, the time at which velocity was at a maximum.
Normally I wouldn't mind this as much, as I know there are people who haven't taken calculus in high school yet. However, what shocked me was that all of them had taken, at the very least, AB Calculus, and have scored at minimum a 4 on the test. I would think that with such a background such a question would be an elementary exercise for them. There were other questions that some had trouble on, such as determining the direction of net acceleration of a person that, while in free-fall, started to suddenly slow down. I know this was not only in their case, as I saw over social media (Yik-Yak to be precise) people asking answers to similar questions.
To add my own experience, two things that stuck out like a sore thumb to me were my performances on my AP Bio and AP US History tests.
One of my friends was already a beginning researcher in biology, working with organisms such as C. Elegans since 9th grade and is considering a research track. I had nothing but a high school level knowledge of biology going into the test (Oh god the teacher was boring.) We both ended up getting a 4 on the exam, and it annoyed her to no end.
I didn't pay attention the entire year in my APUSH class and crammed the entire curriculum into a week with youtube videos. I somehow ended up getting a 5 on the test.
I will be the first to admit I don't know anything about these two subjects.
So I'm wondering what the general consensus is on this forum regarding the rigor of AP tests. Do they adequately prepare students for college level work? Or are they more there to pad college resumes?