Help Justify Advanced Placement
 

My son wants to take honors Chemistry as a High School Freshman. To get into the class he has to write a letter saying why he should be allowed to take it.

While I like the general concept of presenting the class as something you have to earn I'm coming up a bit blank with what to write other than highlighting his current excellent class work (all A's...)

Any suggestions?

I presume he is on a track towards college? I'd mention that he feels that taking the honors class offers him the best opportunity to be an attractive candidate for any college he'd choose to apply to.

And also the usual stuff about wanting to challenge himself.

Don't forget to slip in a Benjamin or two... ;)

What is the route they want him in instead? Is it just a standard chemistry class or is he jumping the standard sciences sequence? In my high school the standard sequence was earth sciences, biology, chemistry, physics and I had to argue my way out of it to get earth sciences, chemistry/physics, AP chemistry/physics, independent study chemistry/physics.

The argument would be different depending what which you're trying to justify.

That said, I can't think of how to justify Advanced Placement (assuming you mean an actual AP-test taking class) since the idea that those courses are in any way college equivalent is a joke.

Indeed. My AP classes were far more advanced than their college level equivalents.

Then you're experience was the opposite of mine. Six AP classes, six passed AP tests and not one a particularly useful educational experience.

They were better in the sciences but the humanities one were just awful.

Are you kidding? Thanks to my AP English experience, I refined my BS skills to such a fine degree that I was able to show up to my first college humanities final an hour late, finish on time, and still receive a near perfect score. And even in the technical world, those same BS skills allow me to churn out plans, reports, proposals, etc. with no effort but better results than 99% of my coworkers (one manager tried to get our whole department to adopt the format from a report I threw together in an hour).

Best life skill I ever learned. Though I suppose that started in elementary school. It seems that through my whole educational career I had teachers that stressed the importance of being able to synthesize thoughts and data into an organized format.

So while I learned next to nothing about the books I read in AP English, I definitely considered it a worthwhile experience.

Of course, I also took 14 AP exams, so I'm a little crazy.

I got community college credit for my AP-level classes, so I'm not sure how much that changes things. But my honors-level humanities seminars freshman year weren't any harder than my high school Senior English classes. Actually, they were much easier. And the science classes? College level was maybe close to my jr. high classes? My history class started the quarter teaching us how to write paragraphs. (And not as an advances writing refinement concept.) Our final paper for that class was to be 5 double-spaced pages - using only our 8th grade level textbook as a source.

If he doesn't get into the AP Chemistry class, he'll have to learn it on the streets by making meth out of cold medicine down in the basement.