<p>How many AP tests have you taken so far?</p>
<p>Because a lit test is much more easier to walk onto as opposed to something like APUSH.</p>
<ol>
<li>Calc BC (5) and Language and Comp (5).</li>
</ol>
<p>That's not the point. The point is, all AP classes teach you is how to fill out little, standardized, multiple choice tests. They don't teach you to think!</p>
<p>That was my biggest problem I had with my friend's class. I mean, I haven't had a true/false, multiple choice, or matching section on any quiz or test in any class my entire high school career. It's just so juvenile.</p>
<p>So, even if I HAD theoretically not done well on the AP tests (although I did, with zero prep on Lit and very limited self-prep on the other two), it wouldn't affect my argument.</p>
<p>Sure, the government needs some standard method of trying to educate a huge amount of students, but that doesn't mean colleges should look down on you for not taking the stupid tests.</p>
<p>Instead of filling out multiple-choice sheets in class, we debate. We discuss. We learn.</p>
<p>Colleges WON'T look down on you for not taking an AP class. Obviously if your school does not offer them, or the rigor of your school is much higher, the adcoms will look at this accordingly. </p>
<p>And honestly, if I had never taken an AP class I would never been as interested in learning. The teachers at my school who taught AP classes had degrees in their courses. That's what made the classes interesting... because the teachers were all enthusiastic about their subject. They weren't just teaching something from a county-mandated curriculum.
Just because AP is in front of the name does not mean we don't discuss and learn, trust me. I had an outside discussion with my AP Language teacher on the function of children's literature in society, and why children's literature tends to be laden with biblical allusion. A class is what you take from it.</p>
<p>^ See but your discussion was outside of class, and it was only due to the quality of your teacher, not the curriculum. Think how many more intellectual experiences you and your teacher could've shared without those restrictions! It could've been a daily occurence!</p>
<p>and yes, colleges try to be PC and say that they look at each applicant in context, but I have a hard time believing that that's entirely true.</p>
<p>2 Years ago, our valedictorian (super-genius btw) didn't get get admitted to any top 10 school (although he was waitlisted at Yale). I read his essays; they were great. He was an All-State football player, an outstanding attorney in Mock Trial, student council president, everything. Now, obviously there were a bunch of factors involved in his "failure" (he ended up at Vanderbilt, so he wasn't too sad), but I think our curriculum was a part of it.</p>
<p>This year, I'm trying to be another "first" in our school's history: the first student accepted to any of the big 4: HYPS.</p>
<p>There is always going to be a curriculum. And the thing about the AP classes at my school is that the administration lets the teachers get away with more. In no other class will the teacher talk about specific biblical allusions, and my APUSH teacher showed footage from her hippie days (she lived three apartment rooms down from Jimi Hendrix and dated Santana for a while, but the footage was from protests of the Kent State Massacre). As long as the students are doing well on their AP exams, the administration turns their heads. </p>
<p>But maybe there was something else about your valedictorian that held him back? But I am surprised he wasn't recruited for football. Anyways, good-luck and I am hopeful that things will turn out better for you!</p>
<p>On a side-note: Does anyone here pay for their AP tests, or does your school/school district cover the costs?</p>
<p>^ lol, due to my school's obvious lack of government funding, I had to pay $84 apiece for all three :(</p>
<p>I'll take just under 20.. 19 I think. Its all about whats offered though. My high school has about 12 and the online school in Florida (FLVS) offers about another 10.</p>
<p>Our state subsidizes AP students for all students. They are reduced price for everyone, and free for students who qualify for free school lunch. But the state budget can't grow as much as was originally projected, so maybe this subsidy will be cut back by the next time students here take AP tests.</p>
<p>edit: double post</p>
<p>We have to pay full price.</p>
<p>Last year my brother and I took 4 a piece, this year we take another 8....</p>
<p>84 x 12........................................ x2. Poor parents =[</p>
<p>I think my school offers around 11-12, I'm taking 5 this year as a sophomore.</p>
<p>In my school its free. If it weren't only about a dozen of the 600 kids in my school would take any haha.</p>
<p>I honestly have no clue why some of the most prestigious universities in the world give AP exams the same status as first-year modules. I go to a slightly-below-average public school in Canada, and with the exception of those in calculus and French, the exams we write are so much more rigorous and intellectually-demanding than APs.</p>
<p>On our exams, we are not gifted with multiple choice questions that merely test our ability to memorize facts or make inferences, nor are we given free-response questions that simply require us to regurgitate paragraphs from a textbook. Like hookem's, our exams generally consist of multiple essays and long- and short-answer questions that require us to synthesize what we have learned in an original way. Our exams test critical-thinking and application skills -- one's ability to develop and defend an original thesis, for example. In that sense, they are very unlike AP exams and very similar to the exams that students actually write in university. Yet we get no special credit from universities.</p>
<p>Now, I must admit, I have never written an actual AP exam in my life, but I <em>have</em> written several practice tests. That was before I decided that I didn't want to spend so much time and money trying to impress US colleges. And it turns out I didn't need to, because without writing a single AP, I got accepted into one of the most selective universities in the US.</p>
<p>Nobody get me wrong, here. I am not deriding anybody's efforts or boasting at my own success. My point is simply that APs are overrated, as they are much less rigorous than the exams that many Canadian and European students write. Somebody just needs to tell adcoms that.</p>
<p>In our district (I am not sure about the state as a whole) as long as you show up at the exam in May, the course is free. For those students who took the class for the GPA boost but don't take the exam at the end of the year must pay for the cost of the test. </p>
<p>I think that the test should be payed for by the school, which would be an incentive for more students to take AP classes. Then again, I know that some schools, particularly inner-city, do not have the funds to do this. The educational system needs an overhaul. -____-</p>
<p>Thanks for the backup, Mustafah :)</p>
<p>My school only offers 7 APs, I really wish they offered more. At my school, if you don't take AP classes, they put you into beginning courses that I could probably pass in 8th grade. I don't mean to sound condescending, but at my school, if you want to be challenged, or just not mind-numbingly bored, you have to take AP's. By the time I graduate, I'll have taken only 5 because of scheduling conflicts. This year was the first year they've offered AP World and it's mostly sophomores. I wanted to take it really badly and even got special permission from the teacher and my counselor, but I couldn't because it's the same period as AP Lit. Fortunately, my parents had already had to deal with my school's uselessness with my brother. So they signed me up for college courses at the local university starting my sophomore year. I'll have taken 7 college courses by the time I graduate now, so hopefully that makes up for my lack of APs. Just because your school doesn't offer many AP courses doesn't mean that you can't impress the adcoms by taking the initiative to study for the tests on your own or take classes at a local college. They aren't going to judge you if you show that you take your education seriously and did everything you could to challenge yourself.</p>
<p>No problem hookem...I just calls 'em how I sees 'em! I understand that AP exams serve as signals to adcoms, but I do not understand why elite universities give students college credit for acing them. By doing that, they're putting AP exams on the same level as IB Diplomas, A-Levels, French Baccalaur</p>
<p>
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I do not understand why elite universities give students college credit for acing them.
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<p>As a Harvard graduate (1861) wrote, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience." </p>
<p>In general, whatever colleges set as admission policies or as advanced placement policies is based on cases known to the college. In particular, College Board performs validation of each of the AP tests from time to time to set the AP test scoring scale. There are certainly some fine high school classes that don't map readily to the AP suggested curricula, but even students attending such classes as those are still welcome to take AP tests as a personal challenge and as a check on what they are learning incidentally from the AP syllabus in courses that are not aligned with the AP syllabus. (My son has done this.) </p>
<p>Good luck to all of you applying this year. I'm sure the admission committee, faced with an embarrassment of riches with so many fine applicants, will build a class of students who had quite varied secondary educations.</p>