Education Tips – What Are The Benefits Of Advanced Placement Courses in High School?
Tips on education are possibly the most valuable tips you can get when you are young. So, if you are going to be entering your senior year of high school next year or if you are a parent to a prospective senior, it might have crossed your mind to undertake AP courses, or even if there really are any benefits to taking Advanced Placement courses. Obviously, when you apply for post-secondary education (college, vocational school or whatever your wish is), your grades will be important, and even though Advanced Placement courses will impart more knowledge, develop critical thinking, they will also be more difficult, and can drop grades; and of course, this begs the question, “Are Advanced Placement courses worth it?”
When it comes to answering the question of how “worth it” Advanced Placement courses are, it is important to realize the way in which colleges view admissions packets; while grades are certainly an important part of an admissions packet, they are not the most important part!
Since there are so many different high schools around the country with such different standards as far as education goes, it is difficult for colleges to put a lot of weight on a student’s grades, as grades will mean different things from school to school. Some schools grade on scales like 90 to 100 is an A, 80 to 89 is a B, etc, but others, such as Dover High School in Ohio, grade on a scale more like 92-100 is an A, 86-91 is a B, etc, which varies greatly from a more traditional grading scale. This has meant that it has become necessary for colleges to find other areas to place importance upon; one area most colleges use is standardized tests (the SAT and the ACT), and the other area they use is the “extras” in a student’s admissions packet. Of course, such extracurricular activities as National Honor Society, leadership-related seminars and clubs, and participation in community service are all among these “extras,” but another big part of these “extras” is the effort a student displays toward gaining as much knowledge as they can through extra school work and difficult courses.
Incredible Speed Study Techniques!
This means that any drop in your grades as a result of an Advanced Placement course will not overshadow the positives that come from having taken that Advanced Placement course; what’s more, if the Advanced Placement courses in question properly prepare their students for the Advanced Placement test at the end of the year, these students will be able to pass the test, and will therefore be able to skip these classes in college! With all of these components mixed in together, you can see that it will be a big advantage to take Advanced Placement courses!
When I was in high school, I took several Advance Placement courses, one of which was Advanced Placement English. I scored a perfect 5 on the end of the year AP test for the course. When I got into college, I was able to test out of taking Freshman AND sophomore level English courses. This saved me both time and a considerable amount of money, as college courses can run into the hundreds of dollars each. I was able to immediately integrate into Junior level electives in English and skip ahead to my skill level instead of wasting time in freshman and sophomore level classes. So this is one story of how Advanced Placement courses can genuinely give you an advantage in college.
Categories: Education Tags: advanced placement courses, ap courses, Benefits Of Advanced Placement Courses, General
