I graduated high school in 2025 having taken 8 AP classes and earning 27 collge credits at my state university. Because of AP classes, I was able to graduate a year early, use the saved money to pay for my Master's program without accruing debt, secure a job after graduation, and buy a house just before COVID.
Due to AP score inflation, it will be harder for individuals to reap the benefits of AP tests. Schools will be less likely to accept the scores for academic credit.
I wonder if there is a difference of opinion on the sanctity of AP tests based on how good you were at different subjects. If you did well at math and science, you might be outraged and wonder why students who were bad at it would want to appear good at it. Wouldn't they be better off in less scientific/mathematic fields?
Someone who was good at English but bad at math might tend to look at those classes as mere credentials for most people. Sure, we need a few poindexters to keep the rockets running on time, but for most people isn't math just a grade you need for your Harvard application? I mean, no one uses fourier transforms after college (right?) but everyone needs to English in their jobs so that's the important test that really separates the wheat from the chafe
I was not great at English Literature, and had little respect for the AP test. I did not care about "sanctity" at all. But I was overjoyed to test out of a college English class and be able to spend the time on something useful instead.
I suspect many AP test takers' (and former test takers') attitudes are similarly self-centered.
The “math” type of thinking is required in many jobs that may not use math per se: computer programming is a prominent example. If you were poor at math, you’ll be poor at programming too.
Most of the programming I did for defense contractors in the 80s involved one area not covered in my math major: spherical trigonometry. We made nuclear fallout maps using DARPANET and the supercomputer at Los Alamos. Later, I wrote a system in three languages to make flightpath overlays for map vugraphs. I was hazy about latitude versus longitude at graduation.
I went to Salisbury State College beginning in 1978 even before test scores were vulgarized by the egalitarians of the universities. Salisbury was a cheap place for the Eastern Shore locals and the suburbanites of Baltimore and Washington DC to go to and see whether they were college material. The Freshmen and Sophomore years weeded out the riff-raff, those who shouldn't have gone to college in the first place. I knew plenty of them. The most memorable one was a young man of Polish extraction from the Baltimore industrial suburb of Essex who left college, joined the Navy, left the Navy and became a pot farmer in California and Hells Angel. He ended up spending time in a Michigan state prison for drug smuggling.
For a high school student, there are a number of benefits of taking an AP Class.
It's rigorous. They put in the work in a fast paced environment. It's beneficial to take a real class.
It's helps the resume and GPA. The more selective colleges appreciate that students have challenged themselves and the grades are beneficially weighted. Sometimes with an extra point (an A, 4.0 becomes 5.0) or sometimes the grade is multiplied by 1.2 (an A, 4.0, becomes 4.8).
It also could be worth college credit. But a lot of schools will only take 4's and 5's. Also the AP class has to map onto a college's curriculum. Looking at engineering class requirements there aren't a whole of opportunities to use some of these softer courses.
I understand the point of the post and think it's dumb that the AP board is doing it. I'm just not sure that a bunch more kids in 2025 getting a 3 in AP English is that big of a deal. AI is going to take their jobs anyway.
It seems that aside from the racial incentives, there is general society-wide tendency over the past 3-4 decades to try to redefine reality rather than accept concrete and perhaps disappointing truths. DIE, restorative justice, gender woo, etc. are all efforts to ignore rather obvious realities. To a large extent I chalk this up to cultural and economic decadence as a result of what was essentially an uninterrupted rise in American economic and cultural dominance over the course of 60 years or so. No child should be below average, so let's game the educational system to makes sure even more kids are high achievers on paper.
We are obviously entering a new era, one in which the US's influence on these fronts is under pressure and not what it once was, and could decline even further although we will still be a major player. I wonder if that will concentrate the national mind to some extent and contribute to casting aside some of the fantasies we can no longer afford to indulge in.
The cop's story seems kind of unusual. Back in our day, the AP tests were difficult enough. Maybe they were not fully equivalent to the U of I college courses they replaced, but it's surprising that the kinsman failed multiple 200 level courses as a result. Things like English and History would have been no problem. Maybe if, for some reason, he took a whole bunch of different sciences at the same time he could have struggled that much from advanced placement. But I would guess there was some other reason.
From what I saw as an undergraduate (at an undistinguished SLAC, not the U of I, admittedly), there was a range of reasons freshmen flunked out, and most had little to do with intelligence/readiness to handle college classes.
For example, there numerous examples, of both sexes, who could not maintain any kind of discipline or study schedule once they were set free from Mom and Dad's house rules. I can think of several who were more than smart enough to deal with their classes, but who pissed away their time on anything (especially partying) other than studying.
Making the distinctions at the right tail of the distribution is even more important than in and around the median.
A 95th percentile test makes you smart enough to be a veterinarian but probably not smart enough to be a physician. Pulling up the average score will have the unintended consequence of meaning that lots of kids are bunched at the maximum score.
I don’t live in the US, and my national school system is very good at obscuring whether my daughter is 95th or 99th percentile smart. This is going to be very relevant for her quite soon for college entry and occupational choice and it is bonkers that testing doesn’t make it clear.
Interesting that after the summer of Floyd, they couldn't get the AP English test inflation going fast enough for the 2021 test. Did someone have the nerve to fight it?
Speaking of nerves, I placed out of one quarter of chemistry and the standard two of calculus, and I was terrified about taking the next courses--mistakenly.
My sister took AP English at TC Williams from the lady who allegedly produced more 5s than any teacher in the country. She bitched about her all year and got bad grades, but she got her 5.
As a thought experiment, what would happen if a) it was robustly proven that myelin thickness was the primary heritable factor for intelligence, and b) means to drastically increase myelin thickness (before or after conception - take your pick) were thereafter discovered.
I’d guess that heritable racial differences would go from a disreputable topic to the Final Boss of civil rights discourse. I’m being deliberately simplistic in my example, but as soon as science can do something concrete about these differences it’ll become a Manhattan Project.
Because society doesn't want smart young people associating with one another?
Hear me out. In a functional society, designing ways to get smart young people together has a lot of upsides (of course it also has the downsides so well described by Charles Murray).
In a corrupt society, there are real dangers to gathering smart young people from across the country together. If all the smartest kids (of all races) get together in a few institutions, they might well start noticing and commenting and critiquing and realizing they are not the only ones who have noticed. They might build on one another's observations. They might start trying to organize for change. Imagine the damage they could do.
Better to make sure every setting to which they turn up is full of people chanting mantras, looking at them funny if they express skepticism, making them feel weird and alone. Safer that way.
My experience from 50 years ago and my observations concerning my kids from the last decade is that universities will grant credit for AP only for general education courses, not for the courses in the student's major area. I was a Physics student - and did not get credit or placement in Physics - which was very appropriate. The Physics classes for Physics majors were far harder and far more demanding than the 'Physics for Poets' classes. You couldn't use AP credit for Physics classes for Engineering or Premed either. To some degree, those Physics classes were filter classes - they filtered people who would not make it in the program at their beginning of their studies, before they had too much time invested. Calculus and Organic Chemistry were other well known filter classes. All were taken early in the course sequences so that the students could transfer to other majors and still graduate on time.
From my kids comments, the situation was roughly the same when they went to the University of Washington within the last decade.
Other than that, I thought that schools required a 5 on the AP to get credit in a non-major subject.
I have taught and subbed in all levels of HS and Jr High. AP classes, regular classes and pre Juve classes. The proficiency levels are not close between the levels and by that time of their lives moving up is nearly impossible. Altering grade requirements does nothing but invite failure in the lower levels and frustration and boredom in the upper classes that are no longer being challenged.
It is no wonder that students are graduating from college without the skills required for life. But I get it. In a socialist society competition and seeking advancement is not a feature but a detriment. The state will tell all you need to know. Perhaps inflated numbers is why socialist states fail.
I graduated high school in 2025 having taken 8 AP classes and earning 27 collge credits at my state university. Because of AP classes, I was able to graduate a year early, use the saved money to pay for my Master's program without accruing debt, secure a job after graduation, and buy a house just before COVID.
Due to AP score inflation, it will be harder for individuals to reap the benefits of AP tests. Schools will be less likely to accept the scores for academic credit.
I wonder if there is a difference of opinion on the sanctity of AP tests based on how good you were at different subjects. If you did well at math and science, you might be outraged and wonder why students who were bad at it would want to appear good at it. Wouldn't they be better off in less scientific/mathematic fields?
Someone who was good at English but bad at math might tend to look at those classes as mere credentials for most people. Sure, we need a few poindexters to keep the rockets running on time, but for most people isn't math just a grade you need for your Harvard application? I mean, no one uses fourier transforms after college (right?) but everyone needs to English in their jobs so that's the important test that really separates the wheat from the chafe
I was not great at English Literature, and had little respect for the AP test. I did not care about "sanctity" at all. But I was overjoyed to test out of a college English class and be able to spend the time on something useful instead.
I suspect many AP test takers' (and former test takers') attitudes are similarly self-centered.
I meant the people who were involved in making and/or purchasing the tests
The “math” type of thinking is required in many jobs that may not use math per se: computer programming is a prominent example. If you were poor at math, you’ll be poor at programming too.
But do you have to have done the math or just needed to have the potential to do the math at some point? I actually think it's the former.
Technically not. But depending on what you’re programming, some math might help.
Most of the programming I did for defense contractors in the 80s involved one area not covered in my math major: spherical trigonometry. We made nuclear fallout maps using DARPANET and the supercomputer at Los Alamos. Later, I wrote a system in three languages to make flightpath overlays for map vugraphs. I was hazy about latitude versus longitude at graduation.
But if you have a math mind you can pick it up, which apparently you did.
It would be a lot easier if you had already studied trig and analytic geometry in regular cartesian planes first. At least I imagine so.
I went to Salisbury State College beginning in 1978 even before test scores were vulgarized by the egalitarians of the universities. Salisbury was a cheap place for the Eastern Shore locals and the suburbanites of Baltimore and Washington DC to go to and see whether they were college material. The Freshmen and Sophomore years weeded out the riff-raff, those who shouldn't have gone to college in the first place. I knew plenty of them. The most memorable one was a young man of Polish extraction from the Baltimore industrial suburb of Essex who left college, joined the Navy, left the Navy and became a pot farmer in California and Hells Angel. He ended up spending time in a Michigan state prison for drug smuggling.
For a high school student, there are a number of benefits of taking an AP Class.
It's rigorous. They put in the work in a fast paced environment. It's beneficial to take a real class.
It's helps the resume and GPA. The more selective colleges appreciate that students have challenged themselves and the grades are beneficially weighted. Sometimes with an extra point (an A, 4.0 becomes 5.0) or sometimes the grade is multiplied by 1.2 (an A, 4.0, becomes 4.8).
It also could be worth college credit. But a lot of schools will only take 4's and 5's. Also the AP class has to map onto a college's curriculum. Looking at engineering class requirements there aren't a whole of opportunities to use some of these softer courses.
I understand the point of the post and think it's dumb that the AP board is doing it. I'm just not sure that a bunch more kids in 2025 getting a 3 in AP English is that big of a deal. AI is going to take their jobs anyway.
It seems that aside from the racial incentives, there is general society-wide tendency over the past 3-4 decades to try to redefine reality rather than accept concrete and perhaps disappointing truths. DIE, restorative justice, gender woo, etc. are all efforts to ignore rather obvious realities. To a large extent I chalk this up to cultural and economic decadence as a result of what was essentially an uninterrupted rise in American economic and cultural dominance over the course of 60 years or so. No child should be below average, so let's game the educational system to makes sure even more kids are high achievers on paper.
We are obviously entering a new era, one in which the US's influence on these fronts is under pressure and not what it once was, and could decline even further although we will still be a major player. I wonder if that will concentrate the national mind to some extent and contribute to casting aside some of the fantasies we can no longer afford to indulge in.
All that is really needed is testing that tells where an individual lies on the distribution of the population of the country as a whole.
One may worship God or Mammon, but not both. (Thou shalt not bear false witness comes to mind here).
Mammon is scoring high across the board (pun intended).
Altruistic? Hah! Good one.
The cop's story seems kind of unusual. Back in our day, the AP tests were difficult enough. Maybe they were not fully equivalent to the U of I college courses they replaced, but it's surprising that the kinsman failed multiple 200 level courses as a result. Things like English and History would have been no problem. Maybe if, for some reason, he took a whole bunch of different sciences at the same time he could have struggled that much from advanced placement. But I would guess there was some other reason.
From what I saw as an undergraduate (at an undistinguished SLAC, not the U of I, admittedly), there was a range of reasons freshmen flunked out, and most had little to do with intelligence/readiness to handle college classes.
For example, there numerous examples, of both sexes, who could not maintain any kind of discipline or study schedule once they were set free from Mom and Dad's house rules. I can think of several who were more than smart enough to deal with their classes, but who pissed away their time on anything (especially partying) other than studying.
Making the distinctions at the right tail of the distribution is even more important than in and around the median.
A 95th percentile test makes you smart enough to be a veterinarian but probably not smart enough to be a physician. Pulling up the average score will have the unintended consequence of meaning that lots of kids are bunched at the maximum score.
I don’t live in the US, and my national school system is very good at obscuring whether my daughter is 95th or 99th percentile smart. This is going to be very relevant for her quite soon for college entry and occupational choice and it is bonkers that testing doesn’t make it clear.
A 95th percentile test makes you smart enough to be a veterinarian but probably not smart enough to be a physician. ???
Really! 95th percentile?
That’s what I wrote.
What are you basing that on? It seems most physicians are about 120 on the IQ scale. I believe 99th percentile would be something like 140.
I don’t believe you have to be in the 95th percentile to be a doctor.
Interesting that after the summer of Floyd, they couldn't get the AP English test inflation going fast enough for the 2021 test. Did someone have the nerve to fight it?
Speaking of nerves, I placed out of one quarter of chemistry and the standard two of calculus, and I was terrified about taking the next courses--mistakenly.
My sister took AP English at TC Williams from the lady who allegedly produced more 5s than any teacher in the country. She bitched about her all year and got bad grades, but she got her 5.
“What can be done to close The Gap?
Realistically, probably nothing.”
As a thought experiment, what would happen if a) it was robustly proven that myelin thickness was the primary heritable factor for intelligence, and b) means to drastically increase myelin thickness (before or after conception - take your pick) were thereafter discovered.
I’d guess that heritable racial differences would go from a disreputable topic to the Final Boss of civil rights discourse. I’m being deliberately simplistic in my example, but as soon as science can do something concrete about these differences it’ll become a Manhattan Project.
We must close the Myelin Gap!
Because society doesn't want smart young people associating with one another?
Hear me out. In a functional society, designing ways to get smart young people together has a lot of upsides (of course it also has the downsides so well described by Charles Murray).
In a corrupt society, there are real dangers to gathering smart young people from across the country together. If all the smartest kids (of all races) get together in a few institutions, they might well start noticing and commenting and critiquing and realizing they are not the only ones who have noticed. They might build on one another's observations. They might start trying to organize for change. Imagine the damage they could do.
Better to make sure every setting to which they turn up is full of people chanting mantras, looking at them funny if they express skepticism, making them feel weird and alone. Safer that way.
Why? It's simple, Steve. To accommodate low IQ blacks and Hispanics.
You’d expect the College Board to invest in its brand by lobbying colleges and universities to do what it did and dumb it down.
My experience from 50 years ago and my observations concerning my kids from the last decade is that universities will grant credit for AP only for general education courses, not for the courses in the student's major area. I was a Physics student - and did not get credit or placement in Physics - which was very appropriate. The Physics classes for Physics majors were far harder and far more demanding than the 'Physics for Poets' classes. You couldn't use AP credit for Physics classes for Engineering or Premed either. To some degree, those Physics classes were filter classes - they filtered people who would not make it in the program at their beginning of their studies, before they had too much time invested. Calculus and Organic Chemistry were other well known filter classes. All were taken early in the course sequences so that the students could transfer to other majors and still graduate on time.
From my kids comments, the situation was roughly the same when they went to the University of Washington within the last decade.
Other than that, I thought that schools required a 5 on the AP to get credit in a non-major subject.
I have taught and subbed in all levels of HS and Jr High. AP classes, regular classes and pre Juve classes. The proficiency levels are not close between the levels and by that time of their lives moving up is nearly impossible. Altering grade requirements does nothing but invite failure in the lower levels and frustration and boredom in the upper classes that are no longer being challenged.
It is no wonder that students are graduating from college without the skills required for life. But I get it. In a socialist society competition and seeking advancement is not a feature but a detriment. The state will tell all you need to know. Perhaps inflated numbers is why socialist states fail.
Before I am smacked, of course I recognize that there are a few exceptions to my observation. A precious few do move up.