I am an Indian student studying in the CBSE syllabus outside India. I am planning to write one AP exam by self -studying. I don’t which one to take CS or calculus AB. I am pretty good in math and I have programing experience. So I can manage both I guess. I only have 1 month to prepare which is April.
First I thought I will take CS as it will show my passion towards Computer science which I very much have. But AP calculus seems to a more famous course which lot of people take. Please help me choose. It’s kind of urgent.
Thanks in advance for the replies.
Neither. AP scores carry little to no weight in college admissions; they are used primarily for credit and/or placement. Many high schools, including elite private schools, have eliminated AP courses from their curriculum, and yet, their graduates still get accepted to top colleges. No AP’s are required. Self studying will not impress the admissions officers.
But won’t it show my passion towards CS? And since many Indiand don’t take APs, won’t it make me stand out among the others? Plus I heard that the admission officers will get impressed if they see students taking hard classes.
As @skieurope said, neither.
I presume you’re applying to MIT (since you posted a chance thread there). Keep in mind that MIT doesn’t give credit for either AP Calculus AB or AP Computer Science (although a 4 or 5 on Calculus AB allows you to take 18.01A/18.02A). In that case, why do you want to take the AP exam so badly? (however I’m aware that I don’t know what other colleges you’re applying to and whether they allow AP credits). You will be better off trying to teach yourself the concepts well, rather than squeeze everything in 1 month and not understand much of it.
You should definitely challenge yourself with hard classes. However, if your school offers no AP classes, do not worry about the AP exams.
From personal experience, last Spring, I went to an Exploring College Options event, which had reps from Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Duke, and Georgetown. During the Q&A, someone asked, “What do you think of applicants who self-study for additional AP’s over and above the AP classes they take?” One rep responded, “Please don’t do that. We’re not impressed by that.” The other reps all nodded.
@Tushar1010 But you’re not taking the class, just the exam. To get the course rigor boost, you need the class.
From the CS perspective, there are thousands of better ways you can show your passion in CS rather than self-studying APCS. For example, actually writing your own programs, games, GUI’s, etc. in Java.
But won’t it make me stand out since many Indian students don’t take AP? And I do develop apps and games and I have programming experience with over 5 languages.
Otherwise do u guys think I should take an extra SAT Subject test other than Math Physics and Chem to make me stand out and impress the admission officer? LIke maybe world history or some language?
Ehh…I’m not so sure if more subject tests necessarily “impresses” the admissions committee. Standardized tests are standardized tests, and elite colleges look at a variety of other factors besides SAT/ACT tests.
If you want to self-study the AP’s, go for it, but it’s likely not going to influence admissions, since AP scores don’t carry much weight in admissions. As I said before, MIT does not give credit for AP Calculus AB or AP Computer Science (it does give credit for Calculus BC).
What is credit exactly?
Units earned for academic work or courses taken.
As a good rule of thumb, you should search these things on the internet before asking for a response. MIT and most every other college will clearly explain how they give credit for AP scores, etc, and what their credits policy is.
This is good practice in general; you don’t want to be asking simple questions on Stack Overflow such as, how do you create an ArrayList, or what an exception is, while self-studying APCS.
Got it