<p>Hi I'm currently a senior at my high school and im looking to pursue a career in business. I'm also wondering if it's too late for me to start self studying for ap exams. I Wish I had done that earlier in high school but if there's any time left for me please let me know. I have only taken an ap exam in spanish language and composition and I'm going to take the ap english literature test this school year. So thanks if anyone replies to me and thank you again </p>
<p>Insofar as your college applications are concerned the value of self studying AP courses is unlikely to improve your chances. A better use of your time are ECs. In areas of deep interest to you. especially ECs in which you play a convincing leadership role. Taking on AP self study in senior year means that you won’t have exam grades until well after acceptance decisions are made so that you’re self studying is at best an unverifiable claim on your application. All this said, if you indeed have a passion in some academic area that goes beyond the classes offered in your school consider a formal independent study subject, or an online course.</p>
<p>I would add on to what @fogcity said and say it’s extremely unlikely to improve your chances. AP results would not be available before admissions come in, and it won’t affect class rigor. The only advantage is AP courses might get you out of some basic classes/gen eds, but you might also be passing on classes in which you would get As.</p>
<p>Further, adding to both @"Erin’s Dad" 's and @fogcity 's comments – with which I fully agree – I have heard a senior admissions official indicate that self-study AP exams are not preferred (although they are accepted), because:
- Students do not always master the subject as thoroughly as they might with traditional classroom/laboratory study
- Adroit test-taking is no substitute for deeper academic preparation. </p>
<p>I agree with above posters about admissions aspect of this. </p>
<p>What is your goal? It can’t be admissions, as you are a senior and won’t be listing these exams on your apps. Is it to get AP credit at the college you attend? If so, you need to check colleges of interest to see what sort of credit they award and for what scores. Some schools give very little while others are extremely generous.</p>
<p>Your AP Lit is a good class. At many schools you may knock out half or all of the freshman English requirement with that. And possibly get Lit gen ed. credit as well.</p>
<p>S is looking into possibly picking up human geography as self study. Have to check the CB materials to see what the tests are like. I have heard that that is a relatively easy one, and it satisfies ‘Global Perspectives’ gen ed at his likely school. You can see info about material covered, old actual essay questions and sample multiple choice questions for each subject, and typical grading scales in CB 's AP pages. Have to poke around a bit, but the info is there. You can also purchase or find free to download old released exams, but need to be careful as some exams have been completely revamped in recent years and the old exams may not correspond to current format (eg, biology.)</p>
<p>If you are considering schools that accept a ‘3’ for credit, this is very easy to get. Need only 45/120 on human geo, for example. It may be undercutting the purpose of going to college to learn a broad range of good stuff, but if you aren’t going to a LAC with small classes, then bypassing huge intro gen ed classes with AP credit is a very good strategy to maximize the value of your education. S has plenty of AP credit he earned the hard way, practicing those essays all year long before the exam. But wouldn’t mind skipping one more freshman class that runs at size 300 if he can do it easily.</p>
<p>Yea im interested more in the aspect of skipping basic classes at college. Thanks for the input </p>
<p>Some good subjects to self study are: psychology, human geography, macro and micro economics.</p>