Reality Check

Did any of you take any Advanced Placement classes in High School? I took three of them and for those of you considering them for yourselves or your children, be sure to do a little research before signing up. The idea is you take a class in High School and at the end of the semester, take what was essentially a CLEP test to get college credit for the class. Back in High School, they pushed all of us at the top of my class very hard to get us into this program and we were thrilled at their promises of possible college credit. It was only afterwards that we learned how we were given the short end of the stick.

I took 3 AP classes and got college credit for only two of them.  While they had the exact same academic weight as normal honors classes, they were over twice as hard. They were actually about on the same difficulty level as the senior level classes I took at FSU. The only benefit from this was that all through my college years I kept telling myself I'd aced harder classes before. I also learned that many colleges don't even accept credit from AP classes. Lots of my friends endured the struggle for absolutely nothing, and ended up having to take the class over again (but it was much easier in college).

Aside from being much more academically challenging and overwhelming, AP classes are extremely academically risky. The whole point of the class is to get college credit, but in most of my classes, it was only the top 10% or less that actually passed the exam. I got As in all three classes and learned all of the material, but it barely even helped me on the AP exams. Especially with calculus, I recognized only about half what was on the exam. When we all discussed it in class afterwards and looked at the syllabus and textbook, we found out that it wasn't just our imagination. We had only learned about half the material, but killed ourselves in the process.

When I got to college, I was given a full Bright Futures scholarship, which pays for up to 5 CLEP exams. I had burned 3 of them on AP Exams, so I was left with 2 CLEP attempts. I took both tests without even studying and clepped out of them with higher grades than I had from my AP exams. I probably could have clepped the other 3 classes and saved myself nearly a year of stress and burnout.  

My AP U.S. History teacher was very up front with us from the beginning. He said, "Your grades WILL suffer in this class, but all I care is you pass the AP Exam. We learned a HUGE amount of material and often covered 3 chapters a week in our text. I hardly ever finished my homework before 2 AM and was always cramming for a test. And I mean this literally. We had our first quiz assigned the first day, and took our first test the first week. Some weeks we had a Test on Monday, learned a whole chapter on Tuesday, Test Wednesday, chapter Thursday, Test Friday. Almost all of our class took place at home where we read, studied, and memorized 20-30 pages of dense material. I got a 3 on the exam, which is barely a passing grade. Probably 90% of my class failed miserably and had nothing to show for all their hard work but some abysmally low grades on their report card.

My Advanced Placement Calculus was the opposite. We worked reasonably hard but the teacher was very lenient with us. Aside from AP Calculus, she was also the cheerleading coach. She was a tiny cute little lady in her 20's and she was the stereotypical dumb blonde. She used to go up on the board and try to graph something. She would say, "And then you do your little swoop-de-doo and plot your points.... and... uh... wait... That doesn't look like what the book says... ummm..... does anyone know what I did wrong?..... can anyone help?....." She was a very nice person, just not a good teacher.

She would often say, "Ok... so I got the tests graded and.. well you all failed... so let's try to take the test again on Friday and maybe you guys can do a little better this time..." Most of the other students just gave up. One of my friends literally brought a pillow to sleep on in class. Another guy made origami all day. One student knit an entire chain mail vest during class. 

I worked really hard and got a very high A in the class, but bombed on the AP exam. After I turned in my exam, I looked around at my fellow students to see how they were doing. There were a couple girls in tears, and few people sleeping with pencils still in hand. One guy had the plastic bag the tests came in over his head, as if trying to end his suffering. Based on my experience, I would say AP classes are about the worst thing a student can do in high school. They were one of the biggest factors in my overall burnout that made me really despise education. They stressed us out to no end, and ended up hurting us more than helping us academically.

Naturally when my brother got to High School I told him about all this. He ended up dual enrolling. He basically took real college classes while still in high school. By the time his friends graduated High School, he had a full AA degree. He will most likely have a full BS degree (and so far a perfect 4.0 GPA) by the time he is 20.  

So we may wonder, with all the drawbacks of the AP program, why do they push us SO hard to take these classes? We had to literally battle the administration to keep me from being pushed into an AP Biology class. We wondered why they were so adamant about not letting me out of the class. I found out later that they are rewarded better funding for more of their students passing the AP exams. They knew I was one of the best candidates for passing and tried VERY hard to protect their investment. I learned through my years in High School that what really motivated them was money, not the well being or even education of the students.