
AP Credit Will No Longer Be Accepted At Dartmouth - marklabedz
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/17/169637369/ap-credit-will-no-longer-be-accepted-at-dartmouth
======
InclinedPlane
Maybe the AP system has degraded over the years. When I was in school it
helped immensely and I was able to enter college as a mid-year sophomore and
graduate early. And the level of material and rigor in AP courses seemed
roughly comparable to 100 and 200 level college courses. The cynic in me sees
this as a money making move, as it means that more incoming students will have
to pay more to graduate.

I'm really curious whether Dartmouth performed any studies on the matter or if
this is just a spontaneous decision based on anecdotal evidence.

P.S. Also, in my experience and observation taking 100 and 200 level classes
in college is a pretty significant ripoff outside of perhaps the top 20
universities in the nation. Almost all of the time such courses tend to be
taught by assistants and are heavily textbook based. For the vast majority of
people pursuing a college education getting an AA at a community college and
then transferring to a local state college is a far, far better option
financially.

~~~
brudgers
From the linked Associated Press article:

 _Rather than award credit for an introductory course to incoming students who
got the highest score on the AP test, the department gave those students a
condensed version of the Dartmouth course's final exam. Ninety percent failed,
Tell said. And when those students went on to take the introductory class,
they performed no better than those who did not have the high AP test scores._

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1696110...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=169611082)

~~~
ghshephard
You know what I'd like to see - is a _second_ study, in which students who got
the highest scores on the _Dartmouth course_ , with the _same interval of
delay_ also take that same final exam.

I was surprised at the number of fellow students at my University who openly
admitted that within a month or two of the final exam, they couldn't recall
much of anything about some of the courses in which they had scored an A or
higher in.

It's entirely possible that the issue isn't the AP courses, but the
significant delay taking (and doing well in the course) - and retesting again.

Alternatively - take a student from another Ivy League, Yale, Harvard - and
see how they would do on a Dartmouth Final exam with some delay between taking
the course and testing out again.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed. A lot of education in the western world is remarkably shallow. Blitz
through a lot of "material" and busy work, then cram so you can pass the test
the next day, then forget everything. It's a horrible way to "learn" anything.

~~~
sliverstorm
I found the issue was just building on my education. You could teach me
concept X until you were blue in the face, and I wouldn't remember a whole lot
a few months later. But give me a half-decent education on concept X and then
soon after move to something that builds on concept X, and I will retain a far
greater understanding of concept X for far longer.

I think it is related to a similar effect I have noticed- when I teach
something, I again retain that information much better.

------
typpo
Some of the more cynical responses to this article ignore the fact that AP
credits at Dartmouth were already strictly limited by departments on a case-
by-case basis. I went in with 11 AP credits and was able to graduate at most a
term early.

Here are some more concrete numbers on how this change affects early
graduation:

\- Students arrive with an average of three credits;

\- Nonetheless 80% of students take 4 years;

\- 20% of students will be required to enroll for an extra term.

The net result is $4 million in extra income. [1] As a point of reference,
Dartmouth's endowment is over $3.4 billion.

I also want to point out that this discussion ignores reasons against AP at
the high school level, which has caused some high schools to stop offering
them.

[1] <http://www.dartblog.com/data/2013/01/010556.php>

------
StevenXC
College math instructor here; I've taught Calculus III for the past three
years. I always feel bad for my freshman students, particularly those in the
fall semester. Some of them are prepared, and some aren't, but almost none of
them have a mature understanding of mathematics that we expect in a sophomore-
level course.

The problem with AP from my observation (at least in math) is that it
encourages teaching the test. I'm certain many of them have never seen
\lim_{h->0}\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h} before, so how can they suddenly expect to
understand the limit definition of a partial derivative either?

I took a Calculus course in high school, skipped on taking the AP test, and
then took an honors section of Cal I when I got to college to get a deeper
understanding (and an easy first-semester A). I feel I made the best decision.

------
lightcatcher
Possibly worth throwing into the discussion: Caltech does not accept any AP
credit. However, classes can be tested out of with Caltech's own tests (which
were considerably more difficult than AP tests in my opinion). Testing out of
these classes removes these classes from graduation requirements.

Is it possible Dartmouth is just trying to raise their academic standards
rather than milk students for more money?

------
wmf
If AP classes don't give credit, I wonder if this will lead some students to
graduate high school after three years.

~~~
jlarocco
And get a jump start working on their Bachelor's degrees which now take six
years.

Seems like the high schools need to add some more rigorous classes for
seniors.

~~~
roguecoder
A high school degree ought to be good for something. Students are entitled to
four years of effective free education. If high schools can't engage them I
think the government should be on the hook for the bill for the first year of
college.

~~~
protomyth
I would prefer they figure out why High School has become so devalued and fix
that. We should respect both the student's time we are requiring and the
taxpayers who are paying for a defective product. Buying students a year of
college doesn't fix the problem and acknowledges that we wasted their time.

------
adrockdust
Accompanying headline: My Kid With AP Credits Will No Longer Be Applying to
Dartmouth

~~~
baddox
Or, what's more likely for most people: Kids with AP Credits Will Now Have
Slightly More Debt After Graduating From Dartmouth.

~~~
adrockdust
Wait, why will they have more debt than non-AP credited kids?

~~~
showerst
Not "more debt that non-AP credited kids", "more debt than they otherwise
would have if Dartmouth took their AP credits".

~~~
baddox
Yes, pardon my slight ambiguity there.

------
rayiner
AP credits have never been a particularly great ROI. My wife went the
different route of signing up for classes at the local community college. You
get a lot more out of them (in the rush to keep up with the joneses, high
school administrators are calling everything "AP" these days), and also
colleges are quite willing to accept those credits for lower-level classes.

~~~
brodney
My high school offered a joint enrollment with a nearby public university.
Taking my senior year there was by far the best decision I made in high
school, and way more illuminating and engaging than if I had signed up for all
AP courses.

------
andrewchoi
As a current student at an Ivy League school, it's interesting to see that
this is getting much backlash now. My school hasn't accepted AP credit for a
while now, and it's never been a problem. Students grouse superficially, but
for the most part, it's understood that they're just prerequisities to get in
to the schools you want to go to.

~~~
richeyrw
So my daughter is in High School and she's doing IB (International
Baccalaureate) does that have any benefit for those aspiring to the Ivy League
or similar?

~~~
andrewchoi
It does, AFAIK IB is respected more than AP on campus. Of course, the more
rigorous subject matter will be better for her in the long run anyways.

------
tokenadult
The relevant pages on the Dartmouth College website

[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upperde/firstyear-
students/credit_...](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upperde/firstyear-
students/credit_and_placement.html)

[http://www.dartmouth.edu/admissions/apply/thinking/credit.ht...](http://www.dartmouth.edu/admissions/apply/thinking/credit.html)

[http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upperde/firstyear-
students/advance...](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upperde/firstyear-
students/advanced_placement_2016.pdf)

don't appear to be updated to match what is reported in the AP article.

What's really news here is that Dartmouth ever granted credit for AP courses--
that is unusual in the Ivy League, of which Dartmouth is one of eight members.
On the other hand, there are hundreds upon hundreds of other colleges all
around the country that continue to offer AP credit for AP scores on specified
tests of a specified level, so each high school student who decides whether or
not to take an AP test is deciding to do so based on what colleges the student
is considering attending. This is no big deal. Each college decides its own
policy. The policy of Harvard

[http://apo.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k73580&pag...](http://apo.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k73580&pageid=icb.page388448)

[http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/transfer/tra...](http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/transfer/transfer_credit.html)

will continue to be different from the policy of (for example) Rutgers,

<http://soe.rutgers.edu/oaa/academic-credit>

<http://sebs.rutgers.edu/new/aptests.asp>

[http://sasundergrad.rutgers.edu/academics/academic-
credit/ad...](http://sasundergrad.rutgers.edu/academics/academic-
credit/advanced-placement)

and students will continue to compare the varied college policies on AP credit

[http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_get.htm...](http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_get.html)

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/apcreditpolicy/index.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/apcreditpolicy/index.jsp)

among a lot of other trade-offs the students consider when deciding where to
attend college, including whether or not they are admitted to the college in
the first place.

~~~
brianchu
On the contrary, it is actually very common for Ivy League schools to offer AP
credit, or at the least allow you to use AP credit to fulfill a requirement /
prerequisite. Princeton, Brown, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania
all offer AP credit or allow fulfilling prerequisites. Outside of the Ivy
League, Stanford offers AP credit. MIT offers AP credit for 2 classes and
elective credit for humanities AP classes.

None of these schools, however, will offer AP credit for _all_ AP classes,
since there is a lot of variability in the rigor of each AP class. Three of
the AP classes that I've observed tend to be accepted for credit are BC
Calculus, Physics C, and Economics. Physics C (for Mechanics and Electricity)
was the most challenging AP test I ever took.

------
dkroy
I know that the AP system is under-fire, but this just screams money grab
technique to me...

------
snake_plissken
I don't get it. You can't make things harder than they are by their nature;
sure, you can make interestingly problems, but in a discipline is a
discipline. For example, general calculus hasn't changed that much in decades.
The same stuff I learned in AP calc senior year of highschool, people learned
freshman year of college. The only thing was, in highschool the exam questions
were actual problems and not proofs of Stokes theorem or some other wildly
pure math question.

~~~
_delirium
I found my intro-level college calculus course to be fairly dissimilar from
what we did in AP CS in high school, though I assume both can vary
considerably. The main difference was that the high school course was much
more calculation-oriented: a huge portion of it was just computing integrals
and derivatives. I didn't find memorizing patterns for computing integrals or
derivatives particularly interesting or useful: if all I need to do is compute
one, Mathematica can do that much for me. What I learned in university calc,
but not high-school calc, was more of the rigorous foundations of what
calculus is and how it works. Part of it might be context, though: the
freshman calc class was synchronized with the freshman physics and chemistry
courses, so there were immediate applications where we had to figure out how
to use calculus as a tool, rather than just as a standalone exercise (my high-
school physics and chem courses were not calculus-based, so there was no
similar synergy).

------
redwood
It always felt like you were robbing yourself of really interesting college
courses if you skipped them due to AP.

I always saw AP as more of a gateway to college due to the prestige/GPA-boost
they gave your application, rather than a real way of getting significant
college credit.

~~~
caw
Actually, it's the reverse. If you score well on AP and then elect to take the
class, you'll probably get a high grade. However, if you take the class and
realize you're in over your head, you damaged your GPA. AP credits didn't
count at my school for your final GPA, so fewer classes meant each class
counted more.

I skipped almost 30 hours of credit with AP. It still took me 5 years to
graduate after switching my major 2nd year. If I had to re-take those classes
I skipped, I would be 1) bored, and 2) loaded with busy work instead of being
able to take classes I wanted. I have friends that had to take Calc 1, whereas
I went right to calc 2. Can't say I would have wanted to take it again.

------
kevinburke
The AP gradations are useless. If I remember right the calculus exam has about
120 possible points and you only need about a 56 to score a 5.

~~~
danteembermage
I took an exam where the median score is typically zero

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathemati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition)

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Also the subject of the funniest HN thread ever:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079>

