Last month, my article was about the International Baccalaureate program in high school. This month, I also want to showcase another very popular program AP (known as Advanced Placement).
Advanced Placement
The AP program offers college-level courses and exams that you can take in high school, while still earning credit for college. It was developed by College Board, in the United States, with the purpose of helping high school students challenge themselves by taking courses in the areas of their interest. Typically, if a high school student earns 4 or 5 in AP examinations, are allowed to skip the corresponding course in their first year of college or university (however, this varies from the individual college/university).
The AP Program has two main goals:
- Providing access to more challenging coursework to students in high school.
- Helping high school students go-ahead to secure college credits and skip the introductory lectures once they graduate high school.
Unlike the IB program, you are not required to take any courses in any set format or manner. AP consists of a three-year program of coursework in a specific subject and corresponding exams in their graduating year. That being said, a student may also be able to take AP exams without being enrolled in AP courses and still get credits for the exams, by choosing to prep or self-study for the exams themselves with their own resources.
Students are able to take one or dozen AP courses depending on their interests, and are not obliged to take any courses or other requirements. AP has a wide range of courses to select from, 38 to be precise. Here are some of the AP courses:
AP English Language and Composition
As mentioned before, you can check out the full range of courses here.
AP exams are scored on a scale of one to five, as follows:
- No recommendation
- Possibly qualified
- Qualified
- Well qualified
- Extremely well qualified
As seen above, 5 means well qualified, and 1 means failure. The AP exams are mostly composed of multiple-choice, whereas, some exams also consist of written essay portions.
Why take AP?
Like the IB program, students take the AP program for many reasons:
- University Acceptance – Although it is not required that a person should take AP in order to get into university, taking the AP program may result in easier acceptance, as colleges are aware of the more challenging, rigorous course load in AP. This holds true for especially university acceptance in the United States.
- Wide variety of Courses & Challenging Material- Students take AP courses because of the wide range of courses they can chose from. As well as, to challenge themselves to more difficult material in high school for better preparation for university.
- Earning College Credits- As mentioned many times before in this article, one can earn college credits for completing and scoring well on AP exams in high school. This saves time and money in college.
TL;DR
The AP Program is an excellent academic program that gives you access to more challenging material to high school. It has some similarities and differences then IB. So, it depends on your learning mindset and future goals, to chose the right program for you in high school.
Hoped this series helped you, and best of luck for your high school years!
