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Ah…advanced placement courses. Could a year of hard work in high school, along with a nail-biter of a test, take the place of –or help in– a college course?

Students have been doing it for years, but now higher education experts aren't so sure it's a good idea.

From Inside Higher Ed:

There's just one problem, according to research presented Friday in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: AP courses - whatever their merits - may be poor substitutes for college courses in the sciences.

The study looked at 18,000 students in introductory biology, chemistry and physics courses in college. The students were at 63 randomly selected four-year colleges and universities and their performance in the courses was correlated to various factors. The researchers found that students who had taken AP courses - even those who had done well on the AP exams - did only marginally better than students who had not taken AP courses. Other factors, such as the rigor of mathematics taken in high school, were found to have a strong impact on whether students did well in college-level work in the sciences.

"Our survey, the largest ever of its type, suggests that AP courses do not contribute substantially to student success in college," said Philip M. Sadler, director of science education at the Harvard University-Smithsonian Center for astrophysics and a senior lecturer in astronomy at Harvard. "Even a score of 5 on an AP test is no guarantee of a college grade of A in the same subject," he said.What do you think? Did you skip college courses thanks to AP credits, or did you take the course in college expecting it to be easy? Was it worth it?

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