Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments How many is too many when it comes to AP?

One of the AP scholars in our state was honored recently for taking 16 AP courses and earning a top score on each exam. 16 just seems mind boggling to me. I went to a top high school in the 1980's and the top students generally only took several AP courses and there were certainly way less than 10 courses total available.

How many is too many?

How many is too many? Too many is when a student is stressed out rather than stretched out. The really important thing with AP classes is that the student become accustomed to being challenged so they don't get hit like an axe between the eyes when they go to college. The secondary benefit is, if the test score is high enough, college credits transferred. Keep your eye on college prep though rather than the credits. I remember my eldest getting a D+ in AP calc. but a 4 on the test when he was a Soph. in HS. He learned how to work hard in that class and that was the most important think he learned in all of HS.

I would think that chronic insomnia or panic attacks would be excellent indications of this.

I'll agree that it's pretty good to get things like this out of the way early.

I don't think I start collecting D+'s until my junior/senior year of college.

Granted, I think I slept through AP calculus and got the highest grade in the class, so it all depends on when you hit some sort of wall.

For me, I *think* it was differential equations that first hit me hard, but I could be wrong.

The State AP Scholar is for one male and one female in each state with the best combo of number of AP tests taken & average score. There are always a few kids that go crazy with APs, so I can see a handful of kids taking 16 APs.

Our HS offers 22 AP courses. Eldest took five AP courses and five AP Tests (though for one AP test she did not take the course, another she took the course but not the test). DH laughed when the College Board sent her an AP Scholar with Distinction certificate - he thinks stuff like that should be reserved for truly exceptional students.

I think five APs is okay and probably the average for good students in our district. My 10th grader is taking one AP test this year and will take four next year. Probably will take another three or four senior year for a total of eight or nine tests, though she is more serious with academics than DD18.

My DD should have started taking AP classes a lot sooner than her junior year. Well. I mean, she effectively skipped 10th grade, but still-- we'd have been a lot better off (er-- or she would, anyway) if she'd been taking the higher level classes (beyond "honors") to begin with as a freshman.

She'll graduate having taken 5 of them and aced them all-- but without having taken the exams for any of them because she simply doesn't care about racking up college credits for the work. We agree completely-- now, she's taking a couple that overlap as dual enrollment coursework at a local community college, actually, three total, I think.

Anyway. Individual students, individual answer. If DD could have, I'd have been tickled for her to have taken 8-12 AP classes through high school. I think that would have been a much better fit for her, myself-- but she really only had the opportunity to take 6 or 7, max, if only because that's all that is offered regularly.

A friend's son took over 16 AP exams, a few years back. He won a national prestigious award. His mother didn't want him to take as many AP classes as he did, it was all student driven. What the kid did not do was take 16 AP classes. Ones does not NEED to take a class to take the AP exam, and a number of them he just studies for the test. The kid loved it, he went to Cal Tech and is very happy there.

That said it is fairly normal these days for top honors kids at my sons High School to take 8-10 AP classes/exams. Starting with AP US in sophomore year. And then during the junior/senior year taking almost nothing but AP's. Top students typically take two English AP exams, US History, AP Government (semester), AP Economics (semester), AP Calculus and either AP Stats or AP Computer Science. At least 2 of AP Biology, AP Chemistry and AP Physics. And possibly one or more of AP World History, AP Music Theory, AP Psychology, or AP Art History depending on interest.

It's a different world out there in High School. The 8-10 above seem to many too me, and I already know my son won't be taking hat many. But I do expect that he will at least take 4, and probably more.

And the answer is YES the kids are extremely stressed out. Many of these kids are doing nothing but studying. Two of my best friends have high school juniors, and neither of them will have a life until AP exams are over in May. Some take the class without taking the exam particularly in senior year where the tests aren't needed for college apps, and the school they are going to limits the number of AP credits they transfer anyway.

Any n where n >0 given how they are dumbed down busywork apparently designed to suck out any remaining intellectual curiousity and consume a teenager's every breathing moment.

Study and just take the exam is what I'll be telling my DD

All I can offer is our direct experience, which suggests that the AP version of the class is often better designed and more coherent than the other options available, at least without going outside of the high school, I mean.

Hardly the level of busywork described by madeinuk... and (again, IME) not exactly "half the pace" of the real college class, either. At least not all of them. Maybe some of them are like that, I don't know-- but the thing is, colleges sometimes offer a "one term" class in just 9 weeks, if they're on quarters, whereas other institutions might offer the same course over sixteen weeks. Nobody seems to think that the latter is "not college level" because it comes at a slightly slower pace.

Honestly, I'm not getting where the hate vibe is coming from here... Puzzles me, since AP may not be perfect... but still, it's a lot better than a lot what ELSE is available during high school.

Yes, the volume is a lot. But honestly... it's the only thing that has taught my DD any kind of work ethic at all-- she doesn't dare get TOO far behind in an AP class, and let me assure everyone that she feels no compunction there otherwise. (oy)


What I don't understand is why colleges will offer credit for the exams. I mean, there's already CLEP, so what the heck is AP for??


DD is definitely not "stressed out" by the workload-- it feels FINE to her. More than fine, in fact. She is the one that insisted on adding a third AP class this term-- late, no less. It was apparently because she was bored and wanted the GPA bump from the weighted course.

I'm not sure that taking 16 AP classes is the same thing as taking 16 AP tests. All four years of my high school English classes were called AP English, but there was only one test. I would have had the same approach for math if I hadn't dropped Calculus senior year... I'd have only taken the one AP test for Calc, though I'd have had three straight years of AP math classes (9th grade Geometry was called Honors). That's 7 of your 16 right there. For school districts that split Calc into 2 classes, you could get half the requirement in only two subjects you were going to be taking anyway.

The next tier down was called College Prep in my school district. The CP kids did waaaaaayyyy more hours of homework than I did.