Both DD's are in a small private school and will be entering 10th grade in the Fall. Unfortunately for DD15 AP Stat and AP Bio are offered at the same time. We've been told it's a good time to take AP Stat because it offers a great teacher, and that teacher might be leaving after next year. On the other hand, DD "thinks" (not sure) she wants to do a science/math route so some have suggested AP Bio so she will be on a good science track.

Our other DD loves history and writing and immediately chose AP World History. She's also a computer fanatic so was wondering about AP Computer Science. She could take AP Statistics or AP Bio but wouldn't be thrilled.

I welcome any advice.

A good AP Biology course will have a lab component that would be difficult to replicate on your own, whereas AP Statistics or Computer Science is easier to self-teach. My eldest son earned a 5 on the AP Computer Science exam without taking the course.

A good AP Biology course will have a lab component that would be difficult to replicate on your own, whereas AP Statistics or Computer Science is easier to self-teach. My eldest son earned a 5 on the AP exam without taking the course.[/quote]

Definitely agree that the lab component would be an important consideration.

However, depending on your kid, having a great teacher might be just as or more important. For my kids, having an awesome teacher would trump almost any other consideration, including subject matter (with a few exceptions). It depends on what her schedule looks like tentatively for junior and senior year, but I would give serious weight to having an awesome teacher for stats and taking AP bio junior year. I guess it would also depend on what other science classes are available- I’m not sure I would take stats if it meant no science classes in her schedule that year. (Or course, ‘awesome teacher’ may mean different things to different folks too, so I would make sure you are on the same page there). A great teacher is also often one who would write a strong letter of recommendation, which is something to weigh as well, though sophomore year might be a bit early to think about that.

DD's school runs on 10 classes over a 2 day schedule. And there are requirements and limitations. Despite being an HG school, you cannot take 3 sciences in 10th grade. And you have to take the prerequisite for each science before you take the AP course. So you cannot take AP bio, chem or physics in 10th grade. Not allowed to take the prerequisite in 9th -- just their customized science which has 3 components, bio, chem and physics. For some reason they are really strict about this, despite most of the kids taking courses outside of the school, like DD took precalc from CTY this year. For so many reasons, I would rather be at another school, where she could have skipped or online Stanford, but the peer group works. And she loves the extracurriculars. The school is accelerated but I do not know why the math spreads out to AP calc in 12th grade. No summer work required. AP statistics seems interesting. Easy course. It seems you can do a few of these on your own. Though you have to do them with the May exam schedule.

Also -- the school is offering Capstone now. Anyone have experience with Capstone and how it is viewed?

Thanks, all. DD is leaning towards AP Bio and hope that the statistics teacher will stay at the school the next year.

someone mentioned, probably on the other thread about so many kids being able to take AP Chinese here. Actually not the case. It is written. Most American born ethnic Chinese kids can talk but cannot read a lot. You have to be able to read a Chinese newspaper and answer questions on the story. So having AP Chinese is not as common as you think.

It was me- many kids here seem to attend Chinese school on Saturdays, where I believe writing is part of the curriculum. I don’t know how many of them take AP Chinese, but my kids have several,friends who have.
These tend to be the same kids who do a lot of self-studying for other APs as well. We have one friend who was a National AP scholar (I think that means 10 APs with a score above a certain level, probably 4) as a junior, which is pretty extreme in our school, as they also limit how many classes can be taken (many of hers were self-studied, outside of our curriculum, including chemistry, etc- despite the fact that the classes are offered at the school. Not my ideal schedule, for sure.

I am a little surprised since DD's school is about 80% chinese. And it is an HG school and hardly any are taking the exam. She cannot name one in her grade who is thinking about it. Most of the kids take Olympiad science and math courses outside of school.

It would appear that the AP Chinese test is intended to be comparable to the end of the second-year (fourth semester) college Chinese language course:
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/...f?course=ap-chinese-language-and-culture

Which makes mores sense with the report that reading a newspaper is part of it. Most first semester college Chinese courses wouldn't cover the thousands of characters necessary to read a newspaper with any level of proficiency.

So presumably, scoring a 5 ought to get one out of the entire world language requirement in university.

I checked the AP statistics. 2014 is the latest year I could access. 300,000 take ap calc. 23,000 took CS. And 5600 took AP Chinese. And 106,000 took AP Spanish. I think for DD, a non-Asian, to take AP Chinese in 10th grade is a good thing. Only 3500 took AP Latin. 162,000 bio. Though only about 25% get a 5 in AP Spanish, 70% get a 5 in AP Chinese. 25% is about the same for a 5 in calc.