Repost from the new Google Group, 'Linda Christas Counselors':
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Linda-Christas-Counselors
Subject: Linda Christas and AP courses
Dear LaTracy,
>From the perspective of a Linda Christas counselor, let me submit the
following as my contribution to your request for ideas that I think are
im****tant for high school students.
The college admissions officers that I've spoken with recently are
becoming concerned about the AP courses that are being taken in high
school.
The reasons for this are manyfold. The following are the chief problems,
that they, the colleges, are expressing:
1) Students are arriving at college burned out with academics as a result
of the long hours spent in AP efforts.
2) The AP courses, while good in some cases, are not up to college
standards, and, therefore, handicap the student in terms of functioning
well on the college level.
3) Students who take lots of AP courses fail to develop skills in other
areas that are so attractive to colleges. We have to remember that
colleges are attempting to build vibrant campuses. A student who has done
nothing much but warm a seat in the library in high school has very little
to offer a college that will bring their campus alive. In other words,
give me an accomplished musician, dancer, debater or
athlete and I can get colleges to take a serious look at the student. Give
me an academic student who is asking a college to take them using
AP courses as equivalents with no demonstrable skills on the resume, and
it is much more difficult to get these students awards of any kind.
4) Students who have taken lots of AP courses tend to be socially immature
relative to other freshman who have developed normally in high
school. High school needs to be a time when students hone their social
and other skills. Staying up to all hours every day to study AP
chemistry is not a good idea.
5) The four year college experience in terms of making contacts and
friends for a lifetime is hampered when young people enter as sophomores
or juniors. The savings in time and money that the student realizes is
lost many times over by the payoff of having contacts in their field later
on.
6) The toll on a student's health is significant if both an AP regimen and
extracurriculars are attempted in high school.
7) Colleges dislike seeing a student come to their campus who is, for lack
of a better term, a grade grubber. It's kind of a contradiction
really. On the one hand, colleges like to see good grades, but on the
other, the personality type that normally concentrates on grades above
all else is less attractive to colleges who are looking to train future
leaders. Leaders most frequently do not take lots of AP courses. They
are out in the community leading.
My recommendation for high school students is to relax, develop socially,
develop one or two outstanding skills that can be sold to
colleges to enhance their, the college's, reputation as well as the day to
day vibrancy of their campus. (Get a counselor or coach who can
share in the decision making process. Students frequently do not have day
to day access to counselors in high school, and during adolescence,
students tend not to want to listen to parents. They need a knowledgeable
adult without baggage to help them. Otherwise, if they, the students,
attend college at all, they will take an average of six years or so to
obtain the bachelors degree OR they will drop out having accrued student
debt as well as missing out on the degree. It is not a
pretty picture.
8) On the practical side of things, colleges are finding that some of
their core course requirements are being undermined by high school AP
courses. The purpose of core courses in college is to give the student
options, so that he or she will have a view of the entire field
of op****tunity before he or she chooses a major. Their feeling is that the
better a student gets to know himself or herself during the
freshman and sophomore years at college, the better choices he or she will
make in terms of major and career.
It is destructive of a college career for an AP student to choose a major
as a sophomore or junior at the age of eighteen. Students change
significantly between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
Many students who choose majors early must transfer to other majors,
extending their college careers. That seems counterproductive to many
college admissions people.
Marilyn Chong, LCC
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