AP Courses

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

What I can say is the IB Program definitely takes a more holistic, integrated approach which helps create well rounded students that are probably more appealing to a liberal arts college, and as a teacher now I am partial to it over AP.

Interesting. My IB experience was completely focused on math and science. There was an avenue for IB Art, but it was very discouraged. I found it incredibly monotonous and it was lots and lots of study and work that absolutely didn't allow for many extra-currriculars. It wasn't until many years later that I learned that was an aberration.

[johnb]

I love this conversation.

I started at Duke in the 1970’s, and I think it’s pretty clear that the 2023 version of Duke features a broader array of skin hues and cultural backgrounds, and probably features a higher percentage of “angular” students (in contrast to the “well-rounded, all-around solid, white preppy” teenagers who were my classmates).

To get accepted to Duke these days, it’s fairly clear that applicants have to present an almost perfect version of themselves. This is true at all the top 10 or 20 mid-size elite private universities, and I don’t see much difference between who these schools recruit/accept (aside from about 3 or 4 5 star basketball players/year who come to Duke and are unlikely to matriculate to Brown or MIT).

Perfect transcripts aren’t exactly boring, but I tend to agree with BD: there’s something stultifying about an educational system that gives its highest/rarest university opportunities only to students who have never made a B- (much less ever had a significant failure).

And this pursuit of so-called perfection continues through college. I teach at an Ivy League med school, and the entering class has had an average GPA of 3.9 for years now. It’s absurd, really, and reflects not just grade inflation but kowtowing to USNews rankings. And it’s not like our current med students are better than when our average gpa was 3.6. If anything, the current crop is bewildered when they get tough feedback—actually, the bewilderment is brief, since they then tend to go complain that the faculty is being overly tough. And then the administration tells the faculty to get with the program and be kinder. But I digress.

National ranking is one reason Duke won’t increase its size significantly. We would lose our place in the US News top 10 if we were perceived to be less competitive to get in, which would happen if we increased our size (or accepted more students with imperfect transcripts).

And of course, National ranking has virtually nothing to do with the quality of teaching.

To answer the AP question. I took a few. I don’t know if my school pitched the courses to AP. They weren’t memorable.

[Bluedog]

I love this conversation.

I started at Duke in the 1970’s, and I think it’s pretty clear that the 2023 version of Duke features a broader array of skin hues and cultural backgrounds, and probably features a higher percentage of “angular” students (in contrast to the “well-rounded, all-around solid, white preppy” teenagers who were my classmates).

To get accepted to Duke these days, it’s fairly clear that applicants have to present an almost perfect version of themselves. This is true at all the top 10 or 20 mid-size elite private universities, and I don’t see much difference between who these schools recruit/accept (aside from about 3 or 4 5 star basketball players/year who come to Duke and are unlikely to matriculate to Brown or MIT).

Perfect transcripts aren’t exactly boring, but I tend to agree with BD: there’s something stultifying about an educational system that gives its highest/rarest university opportunities only to students who have never made a B- (much less ever had a significant failure).

And this pursuit of so-called perfection continues through college. I teach at an Ivy League med school, and the entering class has had an average GPA of 3.9 for years now. It’s absurd, really, and reflects not just grade inflation but kowtowing to USNews rankings. And it’s not like our current med students are better than when our average gpa was 3.6. If anything, the current crop is bewildered when they get tough feedback—actually, the bewilderment is brief, since they then tend to go complain that the faculty is being overly tough. And then the administration tells the faculty to get with the program and be kinder. But I digress.

National ranking is one reason Duke won’t increase its size significantly. We would lose our place in the US News top 10 if we were perceived to be less competitive to get in, which would happen if we increased our size (or accepted more students with imperfect transcripts).

And of course, National ranking has virtually nothing to do with the quality of teaching.

To answer the AP question. I took a few. I don’t know if my school pitched the courses to AP. They weren’t memorable.

US News actually abandoned the acceptance rate as a component of the ranking several years ago. They include % of entering class that is top 10% in HS as well as test scores, but as mentioned above, Duke probably has 5x the number of applicants that fit in the highest bands of those so could easily double class size without that impacting that component one iota. Where it WOULD impact the ranking criteria is "Financial Resources Per Student" which is worth 10%, and with more students, financial resources per student obviously goes down. So, my point is that admissions' selectivity is actually NOT really a component at all in ranking systems. The ranking is largely now a proxy for financials/resources (endowment size, how generous is financial aid, and then the all important "reputation survey" which basically is "prestige").

Here's the table of criteria:
https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...ia-and-weights
Graduation and Retention Rates: 22% (OADs pulling us down!! heeeeheee)
Social mobility: 5%
Graduation rate performance: 8%
Academic reputation (survey): 20%
Faculty resource: 20%
Student selectivity (test scores, 5%, top 10%: 2%): 7%
Financial resources per student: 10%
Alumni giving: 3%
Graduate indebtedness: 5%

[Skydog]

I don't see that BD's wish and keeping class size constant as incompatible. If admissions decided to favor more idiosyncratic specialists (students who may be super interested or talented in one or two areas) or students with uncommon backgrounds over "over-achieving generalists" (7 AP courses, 12 extracurriculars, president of all the clubs) they could do so. I know that I personally benefited from a local admissions interviewer who took that view when I got into Princeton as an undergrad (later went to Duke grad school). I came from a town of 200 and was raised on a farm by my fundamentalist (but good) grandparents. When I went to interview with Princeton's local admissions representative in Corpus Christie, Tx I sat in a room with 6 other kids. They were all impressive: state debate champs, straight A students, school body presidents, the whole 9 yards. My SAT scores were as high as theirs but I had no advanced courses (not possible when there are only 50 students total in my grade) and few extra-curricular activities and even had a couple B's on my HS record. But I got in, the other 6 didn't. The admissions person met with me after I got my admission letter and told me Princeton could fill itself with valedictorians from the NY area if it wanted to but that diversity was valued. He said he was more impressed with how I lifted myself from a broken home (mother was married 3 times by then, father left when I was born), moved to a new large HS my senior year (my older half-brother took me in to live with him and his family in Kingsville when my grandmother got sick) and made straight A's and -according to him - was as well, or better read than the valedictorians he interviewed with me that day. Clearly PU's admissions office took his opinion to heart and admitted me over the more accomplished generalists and despite me not checking the usual boxes.

Now whether Princeton made a smart decision, well that's a different question! But I know from experience that it is possible to change the type of student a University takes - it just depends on how the school decides to value different student attributes.

[johnb]

US News actually abandoned the acceptance rate as a component of the ranking several years ago. They include % of entering class that is top 10% in HS as well as test scores, but as mentioned above, Duke probably has 5x the number of applicants that fit in the highest bands of those so could easily double class size without that impacting that component one iota. Where it WOULD impact the ranking criteria is "Financial Resources Per Student" which is worth 10%, and with more students, financial resources per student obviously goes down. So, my point is that admissions' selectivity is actually NOT really a component at all in ranking systems. The ranking is largely now a proxy for financials/resources (endowment size, how generous is financial aid, and then the all important "reputation survey" which basically is "prestige").

Here's the table of criteria:
https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...ia-and-weights
Graduation and Retention Rates: 22% (OADs pulling us down!! heeeeheee)
Social mobility: 5%
Graduation rate performance: 8%
Academic reputation (survey): 20%
Faculty resource: 20%
Student selectivity (test scores, 5%, top 10%: 2%): 7%
Financial resources per student: 10%
Alumni giving: 3%
Graduate indebtedness: 5%

I’d forgotten they’d done away with the explicit percentage accepted, though I’d guess
1. that it’s a number that students/parents still look at, especially after they’ve been accepted or when they’re comparing elite schools to each other.
2. that it is implicitly factored in those academic reputation surveys and plays a role in so-called student selectivity.

If a school only needs to accept 5% to fill a class, it would be a brave modern university that would look for people with B’s littering the transcript (no matter how interesting the person), expand a class so that the “selectivity” would go down, or hold some sort of raffle (accept half a class based on awesomeness and then accept the other half by lottery from students who would be considered capable of solidly doing the work—which is probably 80% of applicants).