My daughter is a good student taking all honors classes. Mostly A’s. She is a junior and plans to take two AP classes in her senior year. She is looking at a few selective universities. Did she miss the boat by not taking AP classes in junior year?
Confused about whether she should do so if it won’t matter with November applications.
How “selective” are the universities she is trying for? For very highly selective schools or programs, one factor is whether her guidance counselor checks the box that says she took the most rigorous courseload available. She should talk to her GC to ask exactly what that means for her particular high school as standards vary. For example, some high schools quantify it by X number of AP or IB classes; our high school requires students to be in the highest level classes offered in any four of the five cores for all four years.
She will not be penalyzed in the admissions process if her school offers few (or no) AP classes - or doesn’t permit underclassmen to take AP classes. The college will know those things based on the school profile that most high schools send along with the transcript. Ask your GC for a copy if there isn’t one on the high school web site.
Two APs would seem on the skimpy side for programs with <20% (or so) acceptance rates. Seven has been thrown around as a magic number, as that number demonstrates college readiness and more than that doesn’t appear to yield signficantly better readiness. However, there are plenty of exceptions, and the person to answer this would be your guidance counselor and Naviance, if your school uses/offers it.
I do not think that she had missed the boat by not taking APs in her junior year, as she has good grades from her all honors classes; it is helpful to take APs in her senior year, to demonstrate to her target colleges that she has used well the opportunities available to her (even for the colleges in her EA or ED rounds).
Perhaps my S19’s experience is among the outliers. His high school did not offer any APs (all of their courses are claimed to be honors) and he did not report any AP scores; nevertheless, he was accepted to a few top 20s. Looking back, I think these two factors were especially important (perhaps on par with or more than good test scores and GPAs), his essays were good and the regional representatives for his target colleges, knew of his high school and the rigor of his courses, which helped supplement the absence of APs in his high school career. Echoing comment #1, your daughter’s school profile should describe her course load accurately.
What classes is she currently taking?
What AP’s does her HS offer and what was the rationale for not taking any (not allowed, pre-reqs, insuffient grades, fear it’d be too hard…)?
What universities is she thinking of?
Depends on the actual courses offered to her and what she chose.
Skipping AP statistics to take precalculus (and calculus the following year) would look different from skipping AP calculus after completing precalculus.
It depends on your school
Due to a schedule conflict my son took 2 AP junior year and he was sorta freaked out since most kids were taking 4. His school is also all honors. The avg seemed to be like 6-8 APs by senior year. To makeup for it and I think he had something to prove to himself he took 6 APs and Multivariate Calc with cello his senior year and Aced it. He said the AP classes went deeper but he was more interested in the classes and thought overall it was easier then just taking honors classes.
So something like 4-6 by Senior year shows she is challenging herself depending on the AP classes taken. So if she took 2-3 classes AP she would be fine.
If your asking why in senior year? It shows she is preparing for college and proving she can do well in college type classes.
How many AP classes does the school offer, and when? Course rigor will be evaluated in the context of what’s offered at the school.
The reason for my question is about her not taking any AP classes in junior year. Her classes are all honors in Junior year. Based on her schedule, she plans to take two AP classes in Senior year. The school has plenty of AP classes.
I am wondering if taking AP classes only in her Senior year will not be of help to her in the college application process.
Schools look for rigor. AP classes in senior year show she is challenging herself. If her school has the normal amount of APs and she didn’t take any that can be looked negatively depending on the colleges your applying to.
If your D didn’t take AP courses because her HS didn’t offer them then this wouldn’t have a negative impact. However, if your HS offers a lot and your D hasn’t taken any then she wouldn’t have taken the most rigorous course load which is what the T20 will look at. They want to see how the students have challenged themselves within the context of their own HS.
We went to an information session at one of the T20 schools and they said if you have a 4.0 but haven’t taken any of the most difficult classes then they won’t have a good enough gauge to see if you will be able to handle the classes at a highly selective school.
Not sure about the T20-50. Our state school is in that category and plenty of kids from our HS get in without taking the most rigorous schedule. Regardless, your D should absolutely challenge herself senior year to better prepare her for whatever college she ends up at!