meanwhile more than 2.8 million students
take advantage of advanced placement
exams every single year this is
happening in 38 different subjects and
starting this month students can sign up
for fall courses here to show us why you
should encourage your child to take an
AP course is AP vice president Terri
Redick and good morning Terry and you
know a lot of people say what is AP
first of all and is it right for my
child
yes thanks for having me
AP courses advanced placement courses
are college-level courses that you can
take in high school and the benefits of
AP are real students can earn credit
that saves them time and money in
college college admissions officers they
tell us they look for students who
challenge themselves by taking AP in
high school and students who take AP in
high school they develop important
skills like critical thinking reasoning
communication skills that will help them
in college and beyond I'm speaking
personally because I took several AP
classes probably maybe five or six of
them really helped me out as I went into
awhile it's because it gave me some
credit there have things changed over
the years maybe you know there's some
parents that took AP classes or is it
the same module that they're following
that's a great question we get that
question a lot because the AP program
has been around for some time we have 38
AP courses in total and there's a few
new courses in there that some parents
might not be quite familiar with
we've got AP computer science principles
that introduces students to the
foundational concepts of computer
science it includes some coding but it's
not only coding and doing hands-on
project work students get exposed to the
different career options that are out
there with computer science whether it's
engineering app development robotics 3d
animation visual design I could go on
that's a really neat course there's also
a course offering called AP capstone
it's a two course sequence it includes
ap capstone seminar AP capstone research
those are skills
based courses and what that means is
teachers help students identify a topic
of interest to them students learn
college-level research presentation and
other skills using that topic and what
we find is when students are passionate
about the topic they're studying they
can be much more engaged so those are
some new offerings that we have an AP
that that parents could be excited about
because teachers and students are loving
them yeah certainly trying to keep up
with the times there especially with
computer because there's so many tech
related jobs got to ask you this if you
are a parent how do you have that
conversation with your child to kind of
gauge their interest like you were
talking about to see exactly which
courses are right for them because you
know it's not for everyone yeah well
getting to the online tool and and
looking up the their online school
report for the psat/nmsqt and you go to
that section called AP potential and
what happens is if you if you look at
the courses that are available in your
students school it indicates which of
those courses students might have the
best potential of success in based on
how they performed in the PSAT so
parents can sit with their children and
figure out not only based on their
interests but also some of their their
natural strengths based on on how they
did on that assessment that's a great
way to start to really gauge the
interest and and where students can be
particularly successful giving AP a try
and not gonna lie some of these AP exams
can be very challenging their
college-level what resources are
available for the students and the
parents to make sure that they are set
for success we've got some exciting news
there beginning in this new school year
school year 2019 2020 we have new
resources for teachers and students that
are at no additional costs teachers have
access to an online database of 15,000
AP exam questions that they can use for
in-class activities or out of class
practice over the entire course of the
school year students will have access to
personal progress checks where they can
get feedback based on their answers to
see where they need to improve and so
we're really excited for teachers and
students have asked for these additional
kinds of resources for some time we're
thrilled to provide them at no it
no cost sorry Rhetta can thank you so
much we appreciate it and for more
information on what we spoke about this
morning go to explore ap dot org