<p>Yea, def initely one AP isn't going to make much of a difference, and plus I loved doing Aca Deca, you know three years of my high school career I thoroughly enjoyed, so I say definitely follow through with Aca Deca, and drop that AP class.</p>
<p>reflugentis, it was my own fault. I was having a bad day, and I screwed up my essays. Colleges can see that other kids in my class who made 98s got 5s, which proves that I just messed up on the AP test, and not grade inflation.</p>
<p>"Colleges can see that other kids in my class who made 98s got 5s"</p>
<p>How the hell would they see this?</p>
<p>You fool, they can see school statistics for just about everything. How do you think they can determine how some school districts are much higher caliber than others?</p>
<p>valedictorian for one school might not even be in top 30 at another</p>
<p>How would they know which of the students at your school had your AP teacher? How would they know which of the students got over 95% and etc.?</p>
<p>How does aca dec work? My academic challenge is only like jeopardy really..</p>
<p>There's only 1 AP world history teacher. Also, they get full stats about the school. Harvard and other schools go around the nation, researching high schools.</p>
<p>That is by far the most insane thing I've ever read on this board....they do <em>not</em> have a list of classroom grades connected with AP grades, for a huge number of reason, not the least of which is experimental consent. My mother is a doctor in education psychology, which does this type of study (comparing achievement of students), and they have to jump through a huge number of hoops just to get permission to do the study, much less get names of kids, much much less get specific school records. In fact, they don't have specific school records, they can only take results from tests they do themselves. And it isn't just one school district, its 5 different ones in 5 different states. </p>
<p>Also, the ridiculous amount of high schools in the US makes it impossible for "Harvard and other schools go around the nation, researching high schools". What department do you think does this? Admissions? The level of specialty and immense amount of data-collecting required for that research would make it well known, and I've <em>never</em> heard <em>anywhere</em> about colleges going around comparing high schools.</p>
<p>Of course this is all just a big distraction from the main issue: your AP world grade. You've posted about it so many times, and I feel like I've replied twice as many times as you posted. </p>
<p>COLLEGES WILL NOT SEE YOUR GRADE DURING THE APPLICATION PROCESS UNLESS YOU VOLUNTEER IT. If its a <em>huge</em> moral issue for you to hold it back, then write it down, and you have an excellent topic for an essay about how your AP World grade sophomore year inspired you to realize just the work in class wasn't good enough to ensure success, you had to make it a personal goal, or some BS like that. If you can't mentally deal with violating morals, and you can't bring yourself to write it on the application, just cancel it. But for God's sake, let this die.</p>
<p>I love Academic Decathlon...<em>drools</em></p>
<p>It doesn't seem as if very many people are interested in giving you a legitimate answer to your question.</p>
<p>I would say you should do Academic Decathlon, definitely. To the poster who was surprised that AD is a class at your school, I would tell you that there doesn't have to be a class, but if there isn't one, the team won't be any good. It's important to be in the class in order to do well. I would know; I got the top score in the Texas state competition last year (8780 or so [it was a tough year]). Colleges want to see involvement in extracurricular activities, and I think that would be more impressive, especially if you do well, than just taking one more AP class. However, I urge you to do both. The computer science tests don't cover a lot of material, so I think you could easily study for one on your own. It's possible to study for AP tests and do AD at the same time. Again, I would know, I took 9 last year.</p>
<p>So if you really want to challenge yourself and accomplish a lot, you should take the AD class and study for the CS test on your own. However, if that doesn't seem pleasant to you, I would definitely pick AD over CS. Besides, the AD competitions are a lot of fun, unlike a computer science class.</p>
<p>I'd pick AD as well. Does AB just focus on B stuff or does it go through everything? Because if you already did A I can't see how you can spend a whole year on B. It's only a few extra topics. We don't offer A at my school, only AB, and we didn't even move that fast and had extra time before the exam. (However, we do have to take 2 years of CS before AP, one of VB and one of Java.) Self-study the B stuff if you want, but you should take AD. And iwasatypo, I beg to differ on your last statement- my comp sci classes have been some of my most fun classes for all of high school. Granted, I had a great and hilarious teacher who gave us popcorn and donuts and let us listen to music while we did projects, but I have a friend at another school who agreed that his AP CS class was his favorite.</p>