The Bay School is committed to challenging our strongest students by offering a broad range of advanced elective courses in all disciplines. As an expression of Bay’s academic philosophy valuing depth over breadth, these courses are designed to promote rigor and discipline in mastering detail, cultivate depth of synthesis and analysis, demand authentic inquiry, and emphasize examination of the most salient issues faced by the world in the 21st century.

Advanced Placement curricula typically prescribe a course of study that prevents the depth of exploration and creative inquiry that are the hallmarks of a Bay School education. In recognition of this, Bay has, since the school’s founding, been among a vanguard of independent schools nationwide that have chosen to define their college-level advanced electives in ways other than the AP system. The College Board is in the process of rewriting several AP courses in order to allow greater depth of inquiry; the Bay School faculty is tracking these developments to determine if the revised AP curricula will meet our high standards for in-depth, 21st century learning.

Bay School junior- and senior-year electives are college-level courses in their content, depth, and complexity.Colleges and universities throughout the US, including the University of California, have found our upper-level electives to be remarkable in their sophistication; many of these advanced electives have been designated as honors courses by the University of California, giving them the same weight as AP courses in the application process. Approval of additional honors-level courses is pending.

Each year, a number of Bay students successfully prepare for and take AP exams in a variety of subject areas, committing themselves to additional study and preparation outside the normal school day. Bay School students who earn high marks on the AP exams are able to earn course credit at those colleges and universities which participate in the AP system.