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What Does a College Professor Expect from an
AP Chemistry Course?
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by Arden P. Zipp
State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cortland
Cortland, New York
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| | Comparing AP Chemistry with a College-Level Course
Most college and university faculty expect students who have taken AP Chemistry in high school to display a high level of competence in the theoretical aspects of the course work. In fact, a college comparability study conducted by the AP Chemistry Development Committee in 2001 (and reported at the 2002 Biennial Conferences on Chemical Education)* demonstrated that high school students compare very favorably with their collegiate counterparts on common exam questions. In this study, students in first-year chemistry courses at several colleges and universities across the country answered a selection of multiple-choice and free-response questions from the 2001 AP Chemistry Exam. The study compared their scores with those of AP students on the same questions. The analysis of the data showed similar scores for both AP students with exam grades of 5s and high 4s and college/university students who earned As in their classes. Further, AP students with low 4s and 3s had scores equivalent to those of college/university students who received Bs. These results exceeded the previous recommendation that AP grades of 5, 4, and 3 should be considered equivalent to A, B, and C, respectively.
Improving the AP Lab Experience
Despite the apparent equivalence of the AP Chemistry course in preparing students for examinations, there is some concern about the overall comparability of an AP experience in high school with that in a college/university general chemistry course. Even college-level faculty who are convinced of the positive comparisons between high school AP students and their counterparts at the next level on exams may question the laboratory experience of the average AP student.
One concern has to do with the length of time spent in the laboratory in the AP course. A typical college/university chemistry course includes a scheduled three-hour laboratory each week, but many high school AP Chemistry classes devote much less time to lab work. In a survey of students who took the 1999 AP Chemistry Exam, fewer than 10 percent of the respondents reported having 90 minutes or more of laboratory per week. About half attested to having between 30 and 90 minutes of lab per week, and 40 percent indicated they had 30 minutes or less! (Some AP Chemistry teachers even admit to minimizing the amount of time students spend in the lab in order to gain more time to devote to exam preparation.)
A second concern has to do with the nature of the experiments carried out by AP Chemistry students. The 2007, 2008 AP® Chemistry Course Description provides a list of 22 recommended experiments. Although college faculty have affirmed in repeated surveys that they include these same titles in their courses, titles alone do little to indicate the actual nature of the experimental work. College and university chemistry departments typically possess more extensive instrumentation than even the best-equipped secondary schools and often use these instruments in their introductory courses. Further, college-level chemistry courses may expect students to analyze their data in more sophisticated ways than AP students do. Thus, college/university laboratory experiences are potentially much richer than those in high school.
Validating Student Work
While some AP Chemistry lab programs are as demanding as any that students would encounter at the next level, others may be deficient in the number, diversity, or complexity of the experiments performed. Because of this uncertainty, many college and university chemistry departments will not grant full credit for an AP course unless presented with evidence of the details of a student's laboratory work. For AP students with exam grades deemed acceptable by a particular institution (typically 3, 4, or 5, depending on the institution), an inadequate laboratory program may lead to a range of outcomes:
- No credit at all for a student's AP work
- Credit for only one semester of an introductory course (rather than two semesters)
- Credit for the full year of a course upon completion of specified laboratory work
- Credit for the first-year course upon completion of a designated, more advanced course
We strongly advise AP Chemistry students who wish to maximize the credit they receive for the course in college to keep a record of their laboratory work. Students can then present this record when requested by the chemistry department to help the college fairly evaluate their work. The most definitive account of that work is a laboratory notebook (or a photocopy of it) that provides a record of the experimental results rather than simply names of experiments. In addition, we encourage AP Chemistry teachers to improve their laboratory experiences by increasing the sophistication of the experiments their students conduct.
Note
* Tom Corley and John I. Gelder, "The 2001 AP Chemistry College-Comparability Study," paper 542, 17th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, July 28 to August 1, 2002.
Arden P. Zipp is a Distinguished Teaching Professor at State University of New York College at Cortland in Cortland, NY. He has served in every capacity for the College Board in the development and scoring of the AP Chemistry Exam: he has been a Reader, Table Leader, Question Leader, Chief Reader, and Development Committee member and chair. He was also the Chief Examiner for IB Chemistry for many years and is currently the chair of the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad Examinations Task Force. He has authored many publications and is a coauthor of Chemistry in Context. He has made over 230 presentations at local, regional, national, and international meetings, including more than 60 AP Chemistry workshops and summer institutes.
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