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    Joined: Oct 2011
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    Originally Posted by Nautigal
    I don't accept his premise.

    He is worried about non-science majors missing out on introductory level science courses, and science and engineering students missing out on introductory level humanities courses. How many non-science majors are likely to have taken AP Science courses? How many science and engineering majors are likely to have taken AP humanities courses? Sure, I suppose there are a few, but I think that people mostly take AP courses in their area of focus. I don't remember anybody, even the most gung-ho students, taking all of the available AP courses when I was in school -- and there weren't as many then as they offer today.

    In my junior year of high school I decided I wanted to be a novelist, and I'd work as a high school English teacher as my day job. And here are the AP classes I enrolled in for my junior and senior years:

    - Trig/Pre-calc
    - Calculus
    - Chemistry
    - Physics
    - US History
    - European History
    - Government
    - English

    Looks pretty balanced between the humanities and STEM courses to me. And eventually all my plans went to crap, and I ended up in a STEM field after all.

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    Beckee Offline OP
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    A good friend of mine went to college expecting to be an art major, but she couldn't afford the paints. Then she was going to be a biology major, until she took organic chemistry. Finally, she settled on political science. Now she's a high ranking government official who travels on a diplomatic passport.

    Some people do not sort as easily into majors as others.

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    Originally Posted by Nautigal
    How many non-science majors are likely to have taken AP Science courses? How many science and engineering majors are likely to have taken AP humanities courses? Sure, I suppose there are a few, but I think that people mostly take AP courses in their area of focus. I don't remember anybody, even the most gung-ho students, taking all of the available AP courses when I was in school -- and there weren't as many then as they offer today.

    I did. Most of my honors track classmates did. And we also had hybrid courses, ie AP Humanities, that had the full AP English and AP History in them. The exception was the Physics II and Chem II classes that just had a handful of us in them.

    For serious STEM students in HS, nowadays, they should also be focusing on the AMC 8/10 tests as well as other competitions.






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    Originally Posted by Nautigal
    How many non-science majors are likely to have taken AP Science courses? How many science and engineering majors are likely to have taken AP humanities courses? Sure, I suppose there are a few, but I think that people mostly take AP courses in their area of focus. I don't remember anybody, even the most gung-ho students, taking all of the available AP courses when I was in school -- and there weren't as many then as they offer today.

    Well, when I was in high school most of the kids who were interested in science took all the AP classes (science and English/humanities) - I have always known my future was in science, but I was in honors classes all the way through school so I took the English etc AP classes and received college credit for them.

    The opposite wasn't so much true at our high school - the kids who weren't interested in science, even though they were in honors courses, didn't tend to take the AP science/math courses and instead took electives in humanities. That was in a different time though (many many moons ago) and I don't know that what was needed for college applications then is relevant today - if you knew you wanted to major in a liberal arts field when I was in high school, you didn't need 4 years of math credits or much more than 2 years of science credit to get into a really good school.

    Although my kids aren't in high school yet, the children of friends of mine who have been through high school in recent years and are in the AP track tend to take a mix of humanties/science classes, even though our school district allows kids to track into advanced science or advanced language arts without taking both advanced tracks.

    polarbear

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    I think a lot of kids at highly competitive schools now take every AP class they can.

    I went to a college that gave me credit for my AP exams but did not grant placement in a higher section based on AP exam scores.

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