I hope it’s helpful in some way. As you can tell, I have spent way too much time thinking about this! Primarily because I had misgivings all along the way. In the end, I think it was probably the best path given our specific situation, but there were a lot of downsides. The positive? My DD feels super-prepared as a college freshman. She is at what most would call an elite college, and though got no credits for her APs, was able to place out of a lot of classes, and began the year in a small honors science class and an accelerated/compacted math class (where she felt challenged, first time (!!) but prepared). She placed out of foreign language requirements at every college she looked at, And handling the transition to college was a breeze- she still can’t beleive how much free time she has (which is more of a sad commentary on high school, IMO).
I realized I didn’t talk about social sciences at all- neither of our kids have taken any APs there (the classes they took are DE and they didn’t take the AP exams). And foreign language- I think this was a lot of work, but it comes easily to both our kids and their classes have been excellent so I don’t have much to say. There is a lot of reading, they watched videos, newscasts, tv programs, wrote essays, had to do lots of presentations, etc, but this was all part of their curriculum leading up to the AP year, so it just seemed like normal progression to DD. We also didn’t have any experience with some of the “lighter” APs like human geography, etc. Just no room in the schedule, and most are not offered here, probably for that reason.
Best of luck!
