Jan 16, 2018, 1:50 PM
(from Inside Higher Ed) College counselors are growing increasingly concerned about burnout among high school students who are pushed to take the maximum load of AP courses to impress colleges. "I've been in this business since 1981 and have seen a remarkable increase in the number of kids who are just falling apart, checking out, harming themselves and medicating themselves," said one counselor. He urges colleges to consider research that examined college performance by first-year students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The study found a strong correlation between the number of college-level courses high school students take and their first-year grade point average. More college-level courses — up to five — yielded higher academic performance in college. For students taking six or more college-level courses, however, gains in first-year GPA were marginal or even negative. The average grades for students who had taken 10 college-level courses in high school were the same as those who had taken only five such courses.
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