Advanced Placement (AP) courses provides students with the opportunity to engage in college-level coursework and potentially earn college credit while still in high school. AP exams are given in May each year and your school needs to be authorized by the AP Course Audit to offer approved courses.  While there are over 38 different courses, these are the two that focus on computer science.

AP Computer Science Principles

AP Computer Science Principles is an introductory college-level computing course that introduces students to the breadth of the field of computer science. Students learn to design and evaluate solutions and to apply computer science to solve problems through the development of algorithms and programs. They incorporate abstraction into programs and use data to discover new knowledge. Students also explain how computing innovations and computing systems—including the internet—work, explore their potential impacts, and contribute to a computing culture that is collaborative and ethical. Check out the full course description here. 

AP Computer Science A

AP Computer Science A is an introductory college-level computer science course. Students cultivate their understanding of coding through analyzing, writing, and testing code as they explore concepts like modularity, variables, and control structures. Check out the full course description here.