Advanced Placement Courses

What are Advanced Placement (AP) courses?
AP courses are offered in several subjects at the grade 12 university prep level. These are university-level courses offered to high school students. At the end of the course, students take a standardized AP exam. If they demonstrate a mastery of the content on this exam, they can earn credit and/or placement into advanced courses in university. If a student just wants the enriched course material without the need for recognition of advanced placement credit, they can choose to not write the exam.

Please note: AP courses are only available to Abbey Park students. We do not offer courses to students who are not enrolled at APHS already. To enroll at Abbey Park, students need to live in our catchment area (bounded by the QEW, Upper Middle Rd, Dorval Dr and Burloak Dr). Students with a gifted identification living West of Trafalgar Rd in Oakville also have Abbey Park as their home school to receive special education supports, and students with a gifted identification living East of Trafalgar are able to apply for optional attendance to attend APHS.

Advantages to taking AP courses
- These courses appeal to students who are seeking a challenge
- Usually the class sizes are smaller when compared with non-AP sections of the equivalent course
- They are taught by specially trained, experienced, and motivated teachers
- They encourage students to develop confidence, and to learn study habits and time management skills essential for success in their post-secondary education
- Allows students to pre-learn university level material, allowing for higher grades in post-secondary

Course Expectations
- Classes will be faster paced and cover more material than the equivalent course
- More time, both inside and outside of class, is required to complete the lessons, assignments and homework
- Assessment is the same as those in the non-AP, U-level courses
- AP Teachers will have an expectation that their students will think critically, analyze and synthesize facts and data, weigh competing perspectives and write clearly and persuasively.

AP Courses Currently Offered
- AP Advanced Functions (MHF4UP) and Calculus (MCV4UP)*
- AP Statistics (MDM4UP)
- AP Chemistry (SCH4UP)
- AP Biology (SBI4UP)
- AP English (ENG4UP) (2016 reading list here)
- AP Computer Science (ICS4UP, new this year)

*Must be completed as a pair over one year, semester 1 and 2.

AP Exams
- AP exams are administered at APHS on set dates each May.
- Each AP exam contains multiple choice questions and free-response (essay, problem solving, oral response) questions
- Students who do well enough on the AP exam can earn credit and/or placement into advanced university courses. Each school's policy is different (more info is available at the college board website.
- Students are not obligated to share AP exam results with universities.
- Exams are ordered at the beginning of March each year. Students will be told when the specific due date for ordering exams is, and the cost per exam, as it changes year to year.

Self-study for other AP exams
- Students often choose to self-study for other AP exams beyond the 6 courses that are taught at Abbey Park, using the internet, books, or their prior knowledge from related courses.
- The school can help these students to order the exams for these courses, and we'll provide a location and a proctor for each exam a student chooses to write.