[Mick]

It is not the exams so much as the rigor of the courses.  They are supposed to be the equivalent of a college course, and the high school teachers who teach them take that distinction very seriously.  Too seriously, in fact.  I have talked to other college faculty who agree with me that the amount of work their own kids did for an AP course at Gunn was significantly greater than the amount of work their college freshmen did in the equivalent course where they were teaching.  What my daughter did for APUSH at Gunn is vastly more extensive than what SJSU freshmen do for their US History requirement.

Basically, if someone is taking 5 AP courses they are starting college early.  College taught by high school teachers.

Gunn has implemented an AP waiver form--students must do a time-planner and have their parents sign a waiver form to be allowed to enroll in more than 2 AP courses.  But nothing would work quite as well as if Stanford just came out and said "we won't consider more than 3 AP classes in our admissions decision." 

All this aside, the real problem is far deeper than AP classes.  It is a distortion of values, whereby success is measured like big-game trophy hunting.  Who gets in to the best university?  The value of an education and the joyful process of obtaining it get completely lost.

My son did an inordinate amount of work for both WHAP and APUSH, probably less so for APES.  But those first two classes were killers.  He and I toured UCLA with a family friend who had graduated from the same high school.  The friend had taken a lot of AP courses and he stated quite forcefully that freshman year courses were much easier than his high school AP classes.

[Mick]

It is not the exams so much as the rigor of the courses.  They are supposed to be the equivalent of a college course, and the high school teachers who teach them take that distinction very seriously.  Too seriously, in fact.  I have talked to other college faculty who agree with me that the amount of work their own kids did for an AP course at Gunn was significantly greater than the amount of work their college freshmen did in the equivalent course where they were teaching.  What my daughter did for APUSH at Gunn is vastly more extensive than what SJSU freshmen do for their US History requirement.

Basically, if someone is taking 5 AP courses they are starting college early.  College taught by high school teachers.

Gunn has implemented an AP waiver form--students must do a time-planner and have their parents sign a waiver form to be allowed to enroll in more than 2 AP courses.  But nothing would work quite as well as if Stanford just came out and said "we won't consider more than 3 AP classes in our admissions decision." 

All this aside, the real problem is far deeper than AP classes.  It is a distortion of values, whereby success is measured like big-game trophy hunting.  Who gets in to the best university?  The value of an education and the joyful process of obtaining it get completely lost.

My son did an inordinate amount of work for both WHAP and APUSH, probably less so for APES.  But those first two classes were killers.  He and I toured UCLA with a family friend who had graduated from the same high school.  The friend had taken a lot of AP courses and he stated quite forcefully that freshman year courses were much easier than his high school AP classes.