Just saw this video of Taylor Bell on Youtube (shes my crush) and she went to Wharton School in Uni of Pensylvania which is Ivy leagu, where she described her grades as “working hard for 4 years and getting A+ in AP classes”
https://youtu.be/T3vpXa4lxec?si=ni3T4E3xwARL119j
What exactly are AP classes?
Im from India and so how can i enroll in such programmes?
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AP stands for advanced placement, they’re very difficult high school classes that count for college credit if you do well in them.
AP stands for Advanced Placement classes for which you essentially receive college credit based on your score. You take the test at the end of the year/semester and get a score out of 5. Typically a score of 3 and above will get you at least some credit for the course. Not all AP classes are the same difficulty so it’s hard to say definitively how challenging the courses are.
Overall, AP Chemistry and Physics are regarded as some of the more challenging courses. I’d also add AP Calculus 2 to that list but I had friends who were perhaps better at math so they didn’t find the course as challenging. I think most of the time as long as you’re staying on course and putting effort into the curriculum it’s not that hard to score at least a 3 on the test. I took quite a few AP classes during high school and will say some of the classes like AP World History and Language were fairly easy courses.
AP = Advanced Placement. It’s the higher level version of the same subject in high schools, ostensibly equivalent to college level classes.They’re only available to high school students in high schools who have been assessed by their teachers to have the ability and maturity to manage them. High school are our grades 9-12
AP means advanced placement. They are classes with a more difficult curriculum. Some of them also differ from the typical highschool curriculum, such as AP Music Theory. At the end there is a test that if you pass, can sometimes grant you a college credit. They also look good on college applications. Some of them, like AP Gov/Pol, are a walk in the park. Others, like AP Chemistry, are much harder.
To my knowledge they are a US specific thing. However the IB classes might be the closest comparison.
Most schools won’t let you take all AP classes (because each class has more workload). But if she did take all AP classes and still kept a 4.0 GPA then that is incredibly impressive.
AP classes are focused around Advanced Placement Exams administered every spring by The College Board. Scores are 1-5, a 4 or 5 usually means some kind of college credit. The coursework is generally more challenging than even the normal college prep tier of class in that subject. So many schools give “bonus points” to GPA for an AP class, making them out of 5 instead of 4.
As to how hard that is? I don’t know. I did US History, English, and Calc AB back in the day because that’s all we had, many schools offer a lot more now. There’s an expectation that the most competitive students going to the best schools will do quite a few of them. Made me a better writer, also taught me some study habits and how to effective break down text. Useful stuff for college.
I believe the exams are administered in India, but I think you’d have to self tutor.
My experience is now 22 years out of date but.
AP stands for advanced placement. Most junior/senior level AP classes are worth college credit. In my high school we had “honors” classes for sophomores that were similarly weighted but were not technically AP since they didn’t have an applicable AP exam at the end of the year, but they were classes taught at the same difficulty level.
Between AP and college credit courses, I went intonmy University with almost 30 hours of completed credit. I went into engineering and the engineering school wouldn’t count my math and science AP scores (even though they were above the threshold that the university required to count) because “critical courses for your major are exempted”. So I had to retake college chemistry and physics. The college physics was taught better than my AP class. My AP chemistry class covered a whole semesters worth of university chemistry in just under a month.
As to how hard the classes are, I had all As in high school except for a B in the second semester of that AP chemistry course. I graduated 4th in my class of 465. Even most very smart people ended up with a few Bs while taking AP classes.
my high schools advanced placement classes were harder than many of the community college courses i took
Likely not representative of the experience everyone, but my AP course were more challenging than a lot of the college courses I took, lol.
AP classes are college level courses offered at some high schools. For AP classes it doesn’t technically matter what you get in the class, it matters what you get on the test. The highest score is 5. If they said they got all 5’s on their AP tests I would say they are very (school) smart. If you score well enough on the test you will get college credit. Colleges set their own standards as to what score they accept for credit, usually anywhere between a 3 and 5.
But also, AP classes are weighted, so if you had all A’s in your AP classes, your GPA should be over 4.0 (assuming you also got all A’s in the classes that weren’t AP). I was somewhere in the top 30’s out of 400 for class placement and my GPA exceeded 4.0. Most of us did not get into Ivy League schools.
US version of IB classes
It’s pretty easy if you really want to do it and have the drive. American schooling is overall a lot easier to ace.
What AP classes are has already been answered
I took a bunch of AP classes many years ago, and got credit for all. Since they’re taught by High School teachers, not by grad students or new assistant professors whose priority is research, I thought the instruction quality in AP courses was better. My son took some of the same exams when he was in high school, and thought similar
Grading is a function of your school. It’s easier to get A+ at some schools than others
Easier now. Grade inflation is rampant.
Also depends on the school
AP = advanced placement. It’s the curriculum of a college/university course given during high school. If you pass an exam at the end of it, it counts as a college credit meaning you don’t need to take that class in college. AP classes are more difficult than a high school class, sometimes significantly so, and getting an A+ in it is not easy. If your high school offers them, you can usually just sign up for them like any other class.
> she went to Wharton School in Uni of Pensylvania which is Ivy leagu, where she described her grades as “working hard for 4 years and getting A+ in AP classes”
Getting into exclusive universities is a bit more complicated than that. Penn only accepts about 7% of applicants. Her video also appears to tals about extracurricular activities and recommendations and other things that are extremely important.
> What exactly are AP classes?
>
https://ap.collegeboard.org/
Essentially, they are college level courses.
> Im from India and so how can i enroll in such programmes?
>
You can’t simply ‘enroll’ in them. You’d need to attend a high school that offers these courses.
I took the AP US History, Psychology, and Spanish exams. They were difficult because they require deeper knowledge and more critical thinking than rote memorization.
For us, AP classes difficulty varied greatly on the topic. So I took AP History and Anatomy. Anatomy was SIGNIFICANTLY harder. I also took a vocational which is a program that tries to give students experience in a specific field. So for me I took an IT vocational that gave me college credits for networking, cybersecurity, and programming.
These classes allowed me to essentially skip to my sophomore year. When I graduated they added a ton more and my sister was able to go into college as a junior. That being said these credits were only accepted by specific colleges that approve of them. So you likely won’t be able to goto some schools if your credits don’t transfer.
Of course it’s hard. Penn has a low admittance rate and is yet considered to be one of the lesser Ivies (the Wharton graduate school of business is very prestigious, the undergrad far less so).
AP classes are university level classes that allow students in high school to earn university credits if they score well on an exam administered by the same company that organizes the SAT.