Excited
The recent Freshman survey by the Higher Education Research Institute (Heri) has received a lot of press over its discovery that freshman have a hard time paying for college and are worried about their finances. Buried in that report is something interesting about Asian-American students. It turns out Asian-American students work harder to get more education.
33.8% of Asian-American high school student take 5 – 9 AP classes vs. just 15.4% for White-Americans and 18.9% for Hispanic-Americans according to the report.
This difference isn’t because Asian-American students live in areas with more access to advanced classes. It turns out Asian-Americans actually have less access to AP courses than White or Hispanic-Americans. 5.8% of Asian Americans reported that AP courses aren’t available at their school versus 5.3% for White-Americans and 3.6% for Hispanic-Americans.
From the report:
However, Asian American students are more than twice as likely to take between 5 to 9 AP courses in high school compared to White students (33.8% and 15.4%, respectively). Asian American students are also four times more likely (6.4%) to report taking between 10 to 14 AP courses in high school compared with White students (1.5%).
One obvious explanation of this difference is that Asian-American students are simply more driven to educate themselves, as suggested in a recent article. I was certainly no exception; and when I was in high school loaded up on AP classes. I ended up getting enough credits to finish my five year college dual-degree program in four years. Most of my friends thought I was a little crazy; but I was happy to save myself from taking out more loans for an extra year of tuition. I’m sure my parents were pretty happy about that as well. But unlike most kids with immigrant parents, I never felt like I was pushed to work harder. I certainly only got approval from my parents when I succeeded, but they never told me to take AP classes or to work harder at school. As an Asian-American, did you push yourself to take harder classes, or was it your parents?
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TinaTsai
I took a lot of AP classes and my parents didn't even know what at AP class was, so it was pretty much my choice.
As a teacher, I always recommend kids take as many AP classes as possible because at least there are higher standards and stricter adherence to the curriculum compared to Honors or Regular classes. It doesn't guarantee a great teacher (God knows how many lame AP teachers there are out there), but at least your course material and the preparation for the AP test will expose you to better content material.
Personally and professionally, I hate standardized tests, even the APs, but out of all the different tests, I think APs do the best job of raising the bar for high school students and preparing them for college.
Of course, the better alternative is that students engage in the production of authentic creations such as studying and reporting on the state of their local community environment, creating a documentaries of local histories, or writing a novel that expresses their unique social experiences. Instead we have them creating false products, empty grades and sterile test scores that make no impact on the world whatsoever.
It depends on your high school. My high school had no honor courses or AP courses, so I never took any of those. The "hardest" courses were simply the most advanced ones. I did take community college courses while I was in high school - those were my idea and not my parents, who didn't push me to do that.
Interesting entry, Tim, albeit not very surprising, as you point out. I took 8 AP exams in high school--3 in junior year and 5 in senior--and I was nowhere near the top AP exam takers in my school.
Needless to say, there were a lot of Asians at my high school...
No amount of high school AP classes could prepare me for the slacker lifestyle I had as a college student. Three semesters of dance, baby! :p
I think my brother has the record of taking the most AP exams in our high school and getting all 5's: AP U.S. History, Physics B, Calculus BC, Chemistry, English, Latin, Physics C, and I think Studio Art...
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