<p>I'm going to take many AP exams this coming May, and I was just wondering what is the optimal number of general elective units for a student coming out of high school. As in, after having X general elective units coming out of high school, some extra units will be worthless/unusable.</p>
<p>I'm only asking because I would like to focus my studying on a fewer number of exams than I have to take in total. (to increase the probability of 5's)</p>
<p>Also, are HASS requirements the only area that you cannot apply your AP credits (general elective units) to?</p>
<p>Having AP/GE credits used to be helpful in order to double major and meet the 270 credit requirement. Now that the rules have changed it is not particularly helpful to have a lot of AP credits. You have to meet the requirments for both majors and AP credits don’t apply. In any case there is no credit for math/science AP courses outside of AP Calc BC or AP Physics C. (i.e. chem, bio, stats, etc…). One of the few benefits of AP credits is early sophomore standing by spring freshman year.</p>
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<p>That requirement was removed for anyone who entered MIT in Fall 2008 or after. You now just need to complete the GIRs and the requirements for both majors.</p>
<p>As cellardweller said, outside of math or physics, APs won’t really help you. General elective credit means that maybe you can have a term or two of 3 classes instead of 4, but most people won’t do that anyway :D</p>
<p>If you want to take sophomore standing in your second term, general elective credit can be useful for that. But it’s basically empty units. If you’re in a major with fairly few requirements, it could mean that you need fewer classes to graduate (if you’re in one with more requirements, it won’t really help, because you still have to complete the major even if you have enough units).</p>
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<p>You can’t apply them to chem either, and I think they stopped letting people apply them to bio.</p>
<p>General elective units can’t really be “applied” to anything, except to units required outside the GIRs for graduation.</p>
<p>I think it’s useful to come in with a number of general elective units just as a cushion – if you come in with a few classes’ worth of units, you can easily drop a class at some point without worrying about making up the units in a later semester.</p>