<p>Hi guys!</p>
<p>I'm Chris and I'm hopeful to be a part of the Tufts University Class of 2020! In order to be able to apply ED to Tufts (which I really want to because Tufts is my dream school), I've decided to take 3 AP courses this upcoming sophomore year, because I didn't give max effort freshman year and got a measly 3.5. :( I'm taking AP Music Theory I, AP Chinese, and either AP Human Geography or AP Comparative Government.</p>
<p>I will be self studying for AP Chinese and AP Human Geo/AP Comp Govt. AP Chinese won't be exceptionally hard for me as I can speak,write, and read like a Beijing native (my parents are from there). Self-studying for AP Human Geo/AP Comp Govt worries me. My question is, what textbooks should I get for either of those 2 classes?</p>
<p>Looking forward to and aspiring to be a part of the Tufts Class of 2020!</p>
<p>Chris</p>
<p>Are you taking any class associated with Human Geo / Comp Govt?</p>
<p>I’m also not sure how much weight any admissions committee give to self-studying for AP exams. My inclination is “near-zero” but I could be way off.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t taking the exams and getting a 5 have some weight? I might take AP Bio because I want to go premed at Tufts.</p>
<p>Yeah but don’t self study and take millions of APs for the sake of getting admitted, it’s probably not the most effective strategy. It’s true that it’ll be impressive if you can pull it off but also be careful not to spread yourself too thin. </p>
<p>If you really want to impress them, find something you’re actually passionate about and invest your time into that</p>
<p>What twang10 said.</p>
<p>And if you self-study and get a 3 instead of a 5 - where does that leave you? (Aside from having spent all that time self-studying that would’ve been better used following twang10’s advice). No doubt you’re intelligent, but there’s literally no margin for error whatsoever in your strategy.</p>
<p>And while I don’t mean this disparagingly or cynically, since being fluent in two languages is impressive, especially when one of them is Chinese, but scoring a 5 on the AP Chinese exam is all but the norm for those who take it. [AP</a> Chinese Language and Culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Chinese_Language_and_Culture]AP”>AP Chinese Language and Culture - Wikipedia)
Meaning that a score like that won’t so much wow an admissions officer as tell him/her that you’ve had a bilingual upbringing. Which enhances your academic credentials, certainly, just perhaps not as much as you may hope.</p>
<p>I mean I also enjoy Chinese, so I could take it for enjoyment even if it doesn’t have that much weight. I’m planning on doing internships/volunteering at local hospitals since I’m aspiring to go premed. Also, I know that if I put enough effort, I can do well, it’s just that I wasn’t putting in enough effort freshman year.</p>
<p>Also, is tufts syndrome a myth or actually true about them rejecting overqualified students?</p>
<p>P.S. if I really actually did get a 3, and I actually took the class and got a 5, does that affect anything?</p>
<p>bump, I need an idea of what books I need to self-study if I do decide to take these courses.</p>
<p>Right now, I wouldn’t worry about being an “overqualified applicant” because you are not.</p>
<p>Ask about AP exams and self-studying in those appropriate subfora. This is not one of those.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about doing extra APs outside of school. Instead worry about raising your GPA. See how you do in your sophomore year first. Why are you trying to take APs outside anyway? Is yours high school not offering any? Besides doing well in school, you should concentrate on some other activities to do outside of school that are not academic.</p>
<p>Because I’m not allowed to take the actual class, which is why I want to self-study, and I am trying to raise my GPA faster since APs are weighted a lot more at my school. In addition to all of this, I am doing activities outside of school, I’m in the Boy Scouts, I’m trying to work out a internship/volunteering at local hospitals because I want to go premed, I’ve played violin for 11 years and have won multiple awards, and I go to China every year.</p>
<p>Taking APs outside of your high school doesn’t raise your GPA. Those grades don’t go into your GPA. It’s a separate part of your application.</p>
<p>Anyhow, I’m taking AP Music Theory in school. That should help.</p>
<p>Doing a jillion APs is probably not a particularly productive way to stand out as an applicant. At our high school almost no one takes APs as a freshman. A handful take either AP Physics B or AP World as sophomores. Juniors often take three (usually an AP science, AP English Language and APUSH). Senior might take another three. AP Gov and AP Human Geography are often considered AP lite courses as they are the equivalent of one semester not one year courses in college. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t self study for an AP course unless the topic was something that I was really interested in and wasn’t offered by my school. But just to take them to rack up AP Brownie points is counter-productive. I agree with others follow your real interests.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the more competitive schools don’t pay much attention to weighted GPAs anyway, because doing so would give an unfair advantage to students who attend high schools that offer a bigger number of advanced & AP courses. Rather, they focus more on UNweighted GPA and the extent to which applicants avails themselves of the full range of academic opportunities offered by their schools. Meaning that other things being equal an applicant who takes all 3 of the AP courses his/her mediocre HS offers will be looked at more favorably than an applicant who takes 5 AP courses (out of, say, 15 that are offered) at the elite HS he/she attends.</p>
<p>That’s funny, I always had the impression that weighted GPAs were given more…weight by admissions committees, except that GPA would be used primarily for determining class rank and performance in the context of your secondary school. That’s not to say that a really excellent candidate from a school with no opportunities is not going to be looked at favorably, but that doesn’t mean that a kid who gets all As in only standard-level courses is going to be seriously considered by Tufts.</p>
<p>Don is mistaken, at least as it relates to Tufts (and most of the other highly selective private schools of which I am aware). If given a weighted GPA, that’s what we place more energy on. We don’t, however, compare GPAs for students across different schools. A 3.5 at one high school isn’t the same as a 3.5 at another. Or the same as a 90/100 GPA, or a 40 on the IB, or whatever. </p>
<p>So! Yeah!</p>
<p>Apologies for my misstatement, then.</p>
<p>I’m not questioning it, Dan, but FWIW it doesn’t jibe with my experience as the parent of a child who was a recruited athlete. At virtually every school where we met with a coach - including Ivy & NESCAC institutions - the only GPA they exhibited interest in was the unweighted one. The message conveyed to us consistently at those meetings about weighted GPA was “don’t need don’t care” (though my spouse did the Tufts visit, so I don’t know what was discussed there). So maybe that’s unique to the academic pre-screening process for athletes, to enable coaches to weed out kids that are unlikely candidates for admission before they’ve actually applied.</p>
<p>That’s a little different - the NCAA has eligibility rules for coaches who are recruiting athletics, and those rules are tied to unweighted GPAs. I imagine a lot of the schools you looked at were D3, so not bound by those rules, but the culture within athletic recruitment is heavily unweighted in what they want. But for admissions purposes, in terms of what we look at in our evaluations (as opposed to the coaches’ evaluation), that’s different. </p>
<p>Of course, every school is different, and there are no universal rules, but a significant number of highly selective schools pay very close attention to the weighted GPA (Tufts included).</p>
<p>Edited to include the following link: <a href=“http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Eligibility/Becoming+Eligible/Academic+Standards[/url]”>http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Eligibility/Becoming+Eligible/Academic+Standards</a></p>