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Re: Credit for AP and IB exams



Dear Mike (and others),

As a teacher in the AP-C Physics course I guess I have a knee-jerk reflex to schools such as yours which don't really offer credit for successful AP scores. I have witnessed complete courses of the pre-engineering physics in three different universities and I feel quite confident to put forth the notion that the students who are successful on the AP test are quite well suited for the next course in the physics sequence. I'm not sure of the special situations you have at your school and so I may be on the wrong page but my experience, two of which have been in very well funded Big 10 universities, has been that the AP Course offered in High School is an incredible preparation for the "next level" mechanics and E& M courses.

I feel most universities are making decisions to accept or not accept AP scores based primarily on fiscal needs. The college board has seemed to provide ample evidence that students scoring well on the exam are most likely to do well. In fact The Physics Teacher report of the 1974 AP Exam shows that Straight A physics students at some very high powered universities split between scores of 4 and 5 on the AP Physics test that year. I find it a bit upsetting to think that many schools in effect only reward our strong students with pseudo credit and force these students to repeat the material their freshman year. To think that a student might then opt out of an interesting elective in or out of the department instead seems to be a little unfair to the student.

I don't intend to make this into a full blown issue as I'm sure this has probably been addressed before on the list. Just some thoughts from a different perspective

SIncerely,
John