Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums High School Cons of AP Physics C before AP Chem?

Ironically my daughter's Chemistry teacher agrees that the science sequence should be physics chemistry biology. Many kids in my daughters biology class last year dropped the honors biology and ended up this year back in the honors chemistry.

DS has a classmate who is taking AP Physic 2 (non-calculus version) this year and will take AP Physics C next year. That doesn't make sense to me and seems like a fair amount of repetition.

DS will likely follow AP Physics C with AP Chem junior year and AP Bio Senior year. It makes more sense in terms of science competitions given his interests and relative strengths.

Amylou, that was very helpful! Do you think a non-AP high school Physics (or Chemistry) course is a necessary prerequisite for the AP equivalent? Both DS and DD are skipping GT Chem and GT Physics partly because those AP courses are double periods (so presumably slow enough) and they can only take eight courses a year.

Fortunately, there will be plenty of juniors and at least one other sophomore in DS' AP Physics C class next year. Otherwise, he will likely just take over the project as he sometimes does when he is stuck with slackers due to bad luck or lack of choice.

DS will have completed Calculus AB but will be taking Calculus BC concurrently. I am assuming that Calculus BC concurrently would not be an issue.

I suppose you don't really need biology for chemistry or physics although I always thought it was the easiest of the three.

It does sound like a lot of repetition, but that is built in to a lot of the hs curriculum, at least around here. It’s how they are able to offer advanced and AP level work to anyone who wants to take it. But repetition certainly varies by class- here kids take calc BC right after what they call “pre-calc”- there is no point in taking AB because the material is all covered in the pre-calc and AP BC course, unless kids need a slower pace/less material and that repetition.
It seems if one is not comfortable following the typical school progression, one really needs to look at specific details of each class and subject (and that’s probably why deviating from the standard path is strongly discouraged here- they make it really difficult to switch stuff around and are inflexible with someone not fitting into their pathway- because it creates extra work and responsibilities, and it’s easier to just force kids to do repetitive or lower level work than try to figure out whether they can skip stuff. (This is certainly influenced by a couple kids per year who end up requiring extensive tutoring after skipping ahead anyway- the teachers are very patient but it must be super-frustrating for them to essentially teach the skipped course material one-on-one every day after school...and they probably forget all about the ones who are able to do it successfully). There must be an easier way...

Incidentally, I don't think I would have encouraged DS and DD to skip GT Chemistry and GT Physics if the three most accepted AP science courses weren't double periods. Their schedule only allows 8 courses and with their magnet program and instrumental music class on top of the standard English, math, social studies and foreign language, there is just enough room for one double period science each year.

Regarding calculus, I think the reasons students take AB follow by BC is because here the prior math sequences are watered down and because mostly juniors take AB, followed by BC their senior year. In my day, Pre-Calculus was one semester junior year and Calculus AB was the second semester junior year while Calculus BC was senior year. In my kids' district, college-bound students must take four years of high school math in high school. Kids like DS (finishing Calculus BC sophomore year)and DD (finishing Calculus BC junior year) will end up taking one or two math courses at a local college.

We have the same issue with not enough periods in the day. But here, both and honors and AP sciences are all one period plus a second period every other day. It certainly limits how much kids can take. There are lots of kids here who choose taking AP science over music or art, because kids can’t fit all those things in. We really debated about skipping the honors courses, but in the end the heavy workload scared me off- our kids already spend way too much time on homework, so we opted for the traditional path. Hence the repetition, and they won’t have APs in all the sciences. I love that our school tries to equal the playing field for all students, but I believe it ends up hurting the most advanced kids.