My highschool, SCCSC (深圳南山中加学校), provides significant help for students to prepare Advanced Placement (AP), International English Language Testing System (IELTS), and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). But I believe that no matter which school you are in, you can always get a good grade if you work hard (and have a bit of luck). As a traditional Chinese, (and assuming my audience of this page is likely traditional Chinese) studying is still one of the safest and highest return investment you can make as a juvenile (at least before university). The following is my advice for students on AP & IELTS. For employers who want to see my AP or IELTS transcript, please send me a request for detail.
Advance Placement (AP)
The AP aims to help students to be ready for 1st year course, at least I believe that. But it can be used as transfer credit for 1st year course (if you get an eligible score, mostly >=3) as well so you don't have to take it in university. So you can have 3 different paths:
Take the AP -> Take the same course in university as a GPA booster / Solidify your knowledge
Take the AP -> Skip the same course in university to save your time doing higher level course -> chill
Take the AP -> Skip the same course in university to save your time doing higher level course -> graduate early
I took the 2nd path. But be careful that some level of self-study and extra commitment is required. For example, if you take AP Calculus AB & BC as well as AP Micro&Macroeconomics, you can skip MATH 104 & 105 as well as ECON 101 & 102 (or other equivalent courses). So you can take ECON 301 & 302 (Intermediate Micro&Maroeconomics) right away when you get into your second year (as some universities don't allow students to take it in their first year).
So you should see the issue immediately - how can I catch up ECON 301 & 302 if I haven't touched MATH & ECON for one year? Not to mention that the MATH & ECON I have taken is AP, which is still technically highschool level, i.e., not as prestigious as real 1st year courses. Hence, you will have some hardtime transiting and accepting the knowledge from higher level courses.
Furthermore, if you are trying to get a Master or higher degree, you need more Mathy Economics courses and more Math courses like linear algebra, metrics, real variable, math proofs, etc. All of these requires you to have a strong fundation of 1st year MATH and ECON courses. If you only have equivalent AP, you'd better prepare for the shock.
So, I recommend path 1, if you are sure that you are going to do a Master or PhD. I also recommend path 3, if you are sure that you are going to get a job ASAP due to whatever constraints you have. If you are taking path 2, you will have a wonderful and diverse university life due to the less course load.
AP that I have taken:
In this section I will discuss the courses that I have taken and show their importance & my score for your reference, and transfer credit situation (in UBC mainly).
AP Calculus AB - 5
It is mainly about differential calculus. If you have taken Pre-Cal, and know how to use graphical calculator, it should be pretty easy. There's no tricks about this course, and practice makes perfect. Be careful that some university, like U of T doesn't allow transfer credit if you only have AB, so you may need to take AB and BC together. For UBC it can be used as transfer credit separately (AB = MATH 104 and BC = 105 for example). I am not sure what's the most up-to-date situation so please consult your university advisor for the most up-to-date policy.
AP Calculus BC - 5
This is complementary with the AB, and it's mainly about intergral calculus. Same as above. I encourage students to aim a 5 (at least 4) for AB and BC as it's not hard and hard-working is more important than a good teacher, at least that's what I believe. One feature when I took it (back in 2019) was that if you take both AB and BC, the grade that shows up for both class will be the average, i.e. if you only have 4 in AB, and have a 5 on BC and average a 5, your AB and BC will both become 5. There are a lot of wonderful resources online, like Khan Academy and some good Youtube videos can help you with this. Some even teach better than the teachers you can find in institutions, but of course, you need a lot of intrinsic motivation to self-study, and Math is always the most important fundamental thing you have to study for most of the majors in university.
AP Microeconomics - 5
This is a no brainer for most of the students - it's not only easy, but also useful to build basic economic intuition that can help you understand how the world works. This course doesn't require any math than counting and multiplying, but you will need to know how to draw graphs and knowing calculus is an asset to understand some concepts like Marginal Revenue. This course will transfer credit for ECON 101 in UBC and equivalent. I find Khan Academy really helpful during teaching this course. Check it out!
AP Macroeconomics - 5
Same as above, but a bit difficult as I see students struggle here. I would recommend take Micro before taking the Macro. But if you have certain time constraint and want to know macroeconomics like policy, international finance, and government intervention, you should take this. I would consider this is complementary with the AP Micro. This course will transfer credit for ECON 102 in UBC and equivalent. Khan Academy also have a section for AP macro. Check it out!
AP Statistics - 4
If you don't know what to do for your major and have no idea what to do in your life, it's never wrong to start with some basic science. So I bolded Calculus and Statistics as you will never get wrong taking them. This course has two sections: Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, and the latter is a bit funky and requires some graphic calculator skills. If you are planning to do Economics (which is not considered "science"), statistics is VERY important in applied economics, econometrics, and causal inference. You don't want to have good economic intuition but don't know how to use it properly.
AP Physics 1 - 4
This course is more like an eye-opener and requires a good understanding of formula, physics intuition, and some memorization. I can't remember much from this course, but it's not hard and less useful (according to my science friend) than Physics C.
AP Environmental Science - 4
Same as above, an eye-opener course. But this coure can be self-study as I did that with couple of my friends and the help from a teacher occasionally (Thank you Teacher Lina Sun!)
AP Chemistry - 4
This one is harder than the AP Physics 1 and Environmental Science. It will challenge your logic and requires some love of chemistry. It's the very first course that teaches me how to find the solutions using quantitative & qualitative methods. It's equivalent to UBC Chem 121 (I heard from some students I TA in UBC, they said Chem 121 is crazy, so maybe take the AP instead if you want to avoid that).
AP Biology - 3
Hardest AP that I have taken. I got the lowest score of them all... The textbook is as thick as college textbook. Of course I didn't take it quite seriously and I don't really like it. But the amount of transfer credit it provides is large as college also values it's difficulty.
International English Language Testing System (IELTS)
For international students who wants to learn in English Countries, you can either take TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS. I think now we can also take other tests like Duolinguo recently but I am not familiar with those alternatives.
There are 4 sections in IELTS - Listening, Reading, and Writing at the same day, while Speaking test is schedule independently. You could choose to do all of them at the same day but there are some room to place your Speaking test date.
Listening - 8 (best score achieved)
There are 4 section, and the difficulty increase gradually. Section 1 is everyday life situation and you fill in the missing blank of the conclusive sentence of the conversation. Section 2 is sometimes like a graphic question - for example, a person is asking for the direction to the destination and a map is provided for you to fill in the blank of the street names. Section 3 & 4 is academic conversation, like real university class. It's not my specialty but most of the students find it quite easy and practice makes perfect!
Reading - 7 (best score achieved)
You have one hour and there are 3 papers for you to read, and you need to understand what it's talking about to finish the question. I hate reading part and I am not good at it. There are some skills like key words or synonyms that will give you some hints where answers maybe coming so you don't have to really understand everything. There is also a trick that most of the time you only have to read the 1st, 2nd, and last sentence of each paragraph.
Writing - 6.5 (best score achieved)
Hardest part for most of the students, some of them have taken more than 10 tests but still stuck at 5.5 while most of the universities require no less than 6 for all 4 sections in IELTS. There are 2 parts in writing, and we call it small paper and big paper in China (小作文大作文). You have one hour and I recommend you allocate 15 to 20 minutes for the small paper, which is all about describing the statistics/pie chart/graph/boxplot you see. The big paper is presenting your ideas for an arguement like do you think we should use nuclear power? There From my perspective, logic matters - you will be required to clearly and logically present your idea. Also, you need to know which part deserves more emphasis. Last but not least, make sure you are answering the question!!! Logic is what differentiates students from 5.5 to 6.
There's only one book that I will recommend you as it contains lots of real past example questions and sample paper from all grade range (5.5~9, but don't read the paper that got 9 as they are written by examinator and they are not as good as the 8 or 8.5 paper). This is a Chinese book (sorry guys!) called 《慎小嶷十天突破雅思写作》. A very good book, and I am not getting paid advertising it. The author also wrote a book about speaking but it's not as good.
Speaking - 7 (best score achieved)
Practice Practice Practice!!! There is no skill in speaking, and as long as you are talking logically, answering the question, and keep talking smoothly, you will be fine! My very first TA job is having mock speaking IELTS test with students and having English conversation with them to make sure that they are immensed in English environment and actually, that's all you need. There are 3 parts in the speaking test:
Part1 is basic casual chit chatting like what's your name; what's your color; where are you from kind of stuff. It determines whether you are above or below 5.
Part2 needs some practice, as examinator will give you a question and 1 minute to prepare it with a scretch paper. The question is more complex and an example will be like: What's your favourite song? You should say what's the genre; what's it about; what sort of people enjoy it; and why you like it. After 1 minute preparation, you have 2 minutes to talk. I suggest that you should talk no less than 1 minute 40 seconds. But examinor will stop you if you exceed 2 minutes. This will determine your grade to be above or lower than 6.5 (my guessing and feeling).
Part3 is similar to Part2 but there will be no preparation, so it will be a causal talking with a foreigner about some big issues, like what do you think about advertising and which method do you think is better, video or audio? It also needs some practice and also needs some confidence! Some of my students find alcohol helps as it makes them feel confident but I don't recommend to do that in exam... You may go to the bar and use that to practice your confidence by the way.
March 29, 2024
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada