<p>I was just looking at the AP credits awarded for incoming freshmen. It seems that 24 is the maximum allowed at the main campus of Emory. I was surprised to see that Oxford allows a maximum of only 16 credits for AP scores. That doesn't even make sense. Has anyone noticed this?</p>
<p>No, it makes sense. Oxford is a liberal arts type of setting that wants to keep you there for both years (many of the top 4 year LACs hardly take any credits at all. They view their courses as different or more rigorous. They may use your APs for placement, but only a few for credit. Dartmouth, the more LAC like Ivy, has even moved toward such a system. Other top Ivies like Yale and Princeton “accept” the credit, but then for things like science courses, still make you take a placement test regardless. And if you don’t perform well, you essentially must forfeit the AP credit). Emory is a R1 university that is trying to compete with other R-1 universities that have relatively relaxed policies on AP credit. In addition, I think main campus may have more GERs that students have to get to (Oxford has them, and they are more stringent on what qualifies in each category, but I think Emory has more overall), so APs help blunt the dissatisfaction that some students, who don’t really want the “liberal arts” experience will have when they are told they must complete requirements in “x, y, and z”. With Oxford, you are signing up for that sort of experience. Not to mention, many of the introductory courses at Oxford are flat out more rigorous than those on main campus (especially social science and humanities courses; those that apparently have the INQ designation can make most main campus analogs look like courses for chumps) and thus I can see why they may not want to allow people to use that many. Oxford just operates on a different model. In addition, be careful with Emory. Departments like history and political science for example, are reluctant to take the credit. I don’t think history will really accept it all. The most it can do is count toward Emory College graduation requirement, but if you are interested in majoring, you must basically retake U.S. history. I’m sure World and Euro are not accepted either. Pols is reluctant to take Comparative. Psychology will give you 111 credit, but then you must go through 110 if you want a psyche major which is like hell on earth if you thought psyche depts were supposed to be easy. There are all types of ways they get you…The most lenient depts are the science depts (and even then, they are less lenient than most schools. For example, AP credit in chem and biology will only get you credit for semester 1 whereas even at most elites, it gets you out of both semesters). Emory is not all roses on the AP credit issue and it appears it’s playing its cards correctly to keep enrollment high in certain courses or to prevent students from progressing so quickly without going through weeder classes (as are things like psyche 110, pols 120, and US history w/some instructors).</p>
<p>Since Oxford is a two-year program, it has a vested interest is keeping you from graduating from just one year from Oxford (So that people who have no interest in Oxford can’t show up for a year and then leave without experiencing it at all).</p>
<p>An oddity is that Oxford actually accepts more transfer credit (college credit earned on a college campus) for freshmen than the Atlanta campus does (32 hours vs 24), given that Oxford no longer accepts transfer students.</p>
<p>I think it can be summed up in that students can already graduate form Oxford in 1.5 years if they push it. They want to keep Oxford relevant and not just the “easier to be admitted to version of Emory which you suffer through for one year until you get to main campus” sort of deal.</p>