AP course question

[ga girl]

Testing for AP classes

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Can any of you point me in the right direction? Is a homeschooler allowed to test for AP credit? How do I find this information? I am in a situation that I don't know what to do - my 12 year old is a challenge to teach, but in a good way. She is technically 7th grade. However, she's way above grade level is most all subjects. I'd like to go deeper, do more, but don't even know what direction to head in at this point. We received her ACT scores today and we were blown away. I don't want to keep her grade level, as she's easily bored. But, what about high school credit? She's already in Spanish 2 for instance, but I have no idea if I can count it for hs credit or not? I know this has all been asked before and I appreciate your insight.

Thank you,
__________________
Connie

hs'ing dd 12 , ds 11 today (12/28):, ds 8: and loving it!

[LisaK in VA]

I believe, you have to register for the AP classes (usually done at local public/private schools). You can find more information here: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html

But, yes. Homeschool students are allowed to take AP Exams, and have been doing so in increasing numbers.

Other options are CLEP and SAT Subject Exams.

I believe, you can take these exams at any point, and keep the results to send along with your transcript.

When it comes to high school credits -- there are different ways to handle a homeschool transcript. For example: one type lists courses by year, another type just lists courses -- the second type would give you more flexibility as to listing high-school level courses for high school credit.

[Ria]

I believe, you have to register for the AP classes (usually done at local public/private schools).


Actually, there is no requirement that a student take an AP class. One thing you might consider is having your dd take an online AP class via www.pahomeschoolers.com (http://www.pahomeschoolers.com) The coursework will be very challenging! It's certainly possible to teach towards taking AP classes at home, too (but I think PA Homeschoolers sounds like an easier path, lol, since you wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel).

Congrats on your dd's ACT scores (I read your post on the General Board). My 14-yr old just got his SAT scores back and like you, we were thrilled and astounded by his scores.

Ria

[ga girl]

Congrats on your dd's ACT scores (I read your post on the General Board). My 14-yr old just got his SAT scores back and like you, we were thrilled and astounded by his scores.

Ria

Thank you! Congratulations to you and your son, as well. Are you going to pursue higher level classes and have him finish high school early? Or will you keep him grade level and go deeper?

[Ria]

Thank you! Congratulations to you and your son, as well. Are you going to pursue higher level classes and have him finish high school early? Or will you keep him grade level and go deeper?

We homeschooled our son until late Feb of 2008; personal circumstances put an end to homeschooling for us at that time. Our twins homeschooled all the way through and are now sophomores in college. Our younger four boys started school late last winter.

It looks like our kids will remain in public school. We are lucky - the district is excellent and our kids have access to honors and AP classes. Were we still homeschooling, however, we would not choose to have him graduate early. Our twins were similar to this son, and our choice for them was to let them complete their junior and senior years of high school at both community college and local university.

There are kids who NEED to be in college way before their age-mates. Ask on the boards...Jenny in FL has a daughter who is 13 and a sophomore in college. My kids are bright, but not at that level. For my children we needed to make the existing high school years more intense...they would not have been ready to start college early.

Ria

[Mrs Ives]

I have a bunch of gifted kids myself which led to college level work at home. We happened to use CLEP subject exams instead of AP because you can take CLEP exams all year long which meant that we weren't trying to cram all of the testing into a single 2 week period once a year. This is much less stressful for younger kids and my son was able to take tests as soon as he finished each subject which was as likely to occur in October as in May. The downside of CLEP is that it is not accepted at as many colleges as AP exams. I had only intended to use them to back up his HS transcript, but the college he attends actually counted all of them, including giving him credits for all of the corresponding courses. He still qualified as a freshman for scholarship purposes, but the credits bumped him up to the 2nd semester of his sophomore year. Many colleges will limit the number of credits that you can count towards graduation, and a lot of colleges will only use the exams to allow you to skip the corresponding general ed courses but won't actually give you any credits towards graduation. SAT subject exams only test high school level work and they are only useful to prove that you learned something at HS level.

There is no requirement that you take any formal AP course before taking the test. However, you must register for the tests with your local high school. If your district is as lame as ours, you will have to go out of the area to find a high school that is giving whatever exams your child needs to take. This is generally not a problem for exams such as Calculus or Biology, but you could have difficulty finding less popular exams if you're in a more rural area. On the other hand, all of the CLEP exams can be taken at any of their testing sites and you get immediate results on almost all of the tests; the only exception that we ran into was the English writing exam because we had to wait for the essay to be graded. If your kid totally bombs on an exam you will know about it right away, enabling them to restudy the material and retest in a couple of months.

Homeschooling college is a really good option for precocious kids, especially when its impractical to be driving a carload of siblings back and forth because an older sibling is too young to drive themselves to college. There's also all of the money you can save by cutting a year out of college.