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That #### is nuts - let kids be kids.
Every school must be different. Ours only offered three AP's in the junior year (English, Bio and History). A few more are offered in the senior year.
That's not that nuts. AP/IB aren't necessarily that tough if you can handle them. For a decent enough chunk, non-AP classes are too boring to stay engaged in and grades slip.
Its not for everyone - I certainly would not have had the discipline. My younger daughter is in a program where they start taking AP classes as freshmen. For the 2014 graduating class, they averaged 10 AP classes. But, in this program, they skip the 4th grade curriculum, but not 4th grade - so they are always a year ahead, but they don't graduate early. So, I imagine it just seems like another class for these kids.
Generally speaking... they work. The approach of the test and how the questions are written are quite different from what happens in school. An effective test prep class will greatly reduce the chances the student is surprised by anything on the exam.
All depends on where he's at with the test. If he's struggling with the time management aspect or just wants to become more familiar with the structure/content types, it's probably a solid investment. If he's interested in taking the class, that also helps (obviously). The class here is just a one-hit 4 hour seminar, and it's always on a vacation day - nobody wants to be there.
You've got some great advice so far, thought I'd add my experience. My son is a lefty with ADHD, so the testing deck was stacked against him (incredibly outgoing, athletic and well adjusted, but testing crushed him in HS). We knew that any classroom setting or storefront one on one option would likely be a waste of money, so we looked into a private tutor to come to our house. My wife found a guy (a teacher in our school system) that parents seemed to rave about. The guy was spendy and, frankly, I thought he was an ###hole and a waste of time and money and thought about canning him after each visit, but the end result was a 3 point gain from initial testing to retest. If it were just a point, I would have thought we'd ####ed the money away, but a 3 point gain made it all worth while. So much so that it made the difference in which college my son got in to (the one he wanted all along). He is now doing better than we expected there due to some solid tutoring support and a brainy girlfriend that keeps him on task. So, I would gauge how a kid learns before picking an option. And, test as close to the end of the class or tutoring as possible. My son took one more stab at the ACT after being accepted to try and beef up the number for scholarship purposes and went backwards 2 points.
We shelled out for a tutoring center near us and we are happy with the result. My daughter's ACT score dramatically improved over the various pretests she had taken. She waited until this, her senior year, to take the test and she's taken it twice now, with a nice improvement from test #1 to test #2. I've heard that a typical student's score plateaus with the third test but I think we're satisfied.
My daughter ended up going test optional with her applications.
