I am a Junior and I’m currently in the midst of taking 4 AP exams. I’m taking AP Psychology, US History, Statistics, and English Language and Composition. However, I have taken 5 AP classes. I decided not to take AP Physics I after a discussion with my instructor who said if I studied A LOT I could get a 4 maybe. I decided to focus on getting good grades on my other exams instead of stressing about all 5 and doing okay on them. I’m not going into a STEM field but I’m still applying to competitive schools like UCLA, NYU, USC, and Columbia being my top choices. Will not taking the AP Physics exam look bad on my applications?
The most consistent answer I have seen to this particular question is “‘Yes,’ depending.”
Depending on the strength of your application overall, the trend of your scores (which show the level of your mastery in class material), an answer could be ‘No’, this action will not hurt you.
On “Yes, depending”:
The consensus has been if you can make the case that taking the exam would have been a financial hardship or strain, no penalty should attach. But, if such a case cannot be made, the omission of an AP exam.score for which you did prepare by taking the class will look like you took the exam but didn’t score well and deliberately removed it from the grouping. That looks a little more suspect.
My advice, however, is to do what you feel best prepares you to make the best showing on the AP exam(s) overall. That sounds like giving yourself room to beeathe, and approaching the morning of the exam with a clear head, a good night’s rest, and a healthy start instead of anxious- ridden cramming. So, no AP Physics exam.
This advice is based on a couple of things:
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You’ve had all year to gain your footing, or determine your footing in Physics, and you have assessed (apparently reasonably so, considering your consult with tour teacher). You don’t feel you can do the work needed to attain the ‘4’ without creating an imbalance in your study life.
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The exams are usually used in a placement fashion after one is admitted, and not used as part of the admissions decision, so you are seeking to show strength of curriculum, discipline and fortitude by completing the action of taking the exam. What you feel demonstrates these qualities, also present in the applications of your candidate cohort, elsewhere in your student profile is for you to determine.
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I’ve got a kid accepted to one of those schools on your list who did not take the AP exam, though the class was taken. I cannot reasonably tell you what offset the missing AP exam except to believe there were enough items in my kid’s profile to demonstrate possession of the positive qualities I have listed above.
Hope this helps.
While people have provided opinions one way or another, I have not yet heard anything yet on the topic from a college admissions person. The point of taking an AP course is that it generally is the most challenging course that a high school provides. The number of correct responses required for getting a 5 on an AP exam are often lower than getting grade that would translate to an A. The reason that kids who get As on the AP courses by score 3s or 4s on the AP are because of stress, and because remembering everything one learns from the entire year is not always easy.
I do not know whether a college will accept an AP course as a “real” AP course, if you have not taken the AP exam.
Would agree with those points, MWolf.
OP sounds prepared to forego any potential university credit (advanced placement or general/ elective crefits). afforded by this one AP exam. The greater concern was chances of being reviewed as a strong candidate without the exam.
Do 3s hurt one for admissions or is it just that 5s help? Not asking about placing out of college classes, just purely admissions. Would it be better to have a 3 than not taking the test?
A 3 at a highly selective college is not worth submitting.
AP Physics 1 exam was administered last Tuesday (5/2). No point in dwelling on whether skipping the exam will hurt your college applications since there is nothing you can do about it at this point. FWIW, consensus among DS 19 and his friends is that Physics 1 was a difficult exam and Physics 2 was easy.
@Lindagaf Are you sure about that? If a student has a bunch of 4s and 5s and one 3, isn’t it better to submit the 3 (a passing grade) instead of leaving the admissions folks to wonder if the missing score was a 1 or a 2 (failing)?
Maybe, @JanieWalker . But, if a student is applying to, let’s say, HYPSM, and all the other kids submit 4 and 5 for all tests, then the 3 sticks out. Because not all schools make kids take AP tests, or not all kids who take the class can afford the tests, there’s no way of knowing if that student took the test or not. Admissions can guess, of course, but why confirm for them that you got a lower score than your competition?
Conventional wisdom on CC says that colleges don’t make decisions based on AP test scores (except maybe for home schoolers?) because they know that many kids don’t have the money to pay for the tests, or the school doesn’t require the tests, or the school doesn’t offer APs in the first place. As far as I know, no super selective college requires submission of AP scores, which is why self reporting is optional. If you self-report, then get accepted, you can always submit the three, if maybe it gets you placement rights. Remember though, I’m only talking about super selective colleges, where a three is unlikely to serve any purpose at all.
Submitting a three is kind of like advertising that you got a C on a test. It means qualified, and it’s the average on APs. HYPSM aren’t looking for average.
@Lindagaf - thanks for your thorough response. My daughter is homeschooled (and taking the AP Calc AB exam as I type), and she got a 3 on one of her AP exams last year (she got a 4 on AP Chem and a 3 on AP Comp Sci). I plan to have her submit that 3 because we aren’t in a situation where we can say her school doesn’t make her take the exam, we are going to be full pay so they will know we can afford the tests, and also, she was in 9th grade last year and I figure one 3 on an AP exam in 9th grade might not matter so much in the grand scheme of things if she has 4s and 5s with all the other APs (she’ll have taken twelve AP exams by the time she graduates). Better than have them think it was a 1 or a 2. She is very good with Comp Sci and had a very bad test day (kids were talking and laughing during the MC portion, which distracted her), and she wants to show people that she at least passed.
I guess maybe it all depends on the circumstances with each student - whether or not to take the exam at all, and if they do, whether or not they should report a 3.
Fret not…colleges are much more concerned about your grades in those classes as opposed to the AP tests.
Why is that?
- Doing well in a class shows you can learn over the year and work hard over a period of time. That is what they want in college.
- Not all HS have many APs.
- Many people take AP tests senior year which is too late for admissions
For example, Stanford says:
Students currently enrolled in AP courses are not required to submit AP scores as part of our admission process. AP scores that are reported are acknowledged but rarely play a significant role in the evaluation of an application. Grades earned over the course of a term, or a year, and evaluations from instructors who can comment on classroom engagement provide us with the most detailed insight into a student’s readiness for the academic rigors of Stanford.
http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/prepare.html
I don’t think a 3 is equivalent to a C and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think you are often better to report it if you’re reporting all the others. I don’t think it will be a 3 that keeps you out of HYPSM.
These responses are interesting to me. It’s too late for my kids, but S19 did not take any of the AP tests. When we were looking at schools for S16, it seemed that fewer schools took them at all. And for those that did, you had to get a 5, possibly a 4, in order to receive any kind of credit. S19 has plenty of DE classes that will automatically transfer to his state public school. His reasoning was why pay $80/test for something that I probably won’t ask for credit for anyway? I agreed. I had no idea admissions really cared about the score unless you had all 5s.
I will say that S19 did not apply to any elite schools. State public (including UVA) and Clemson and was accepted to all without the AP tests. (So there is your sample of 1.)
Our CC tells kids to report only 4 and 5 scores on their apps. A 3 doesn’t strengthen an application.
With that said, a student in a home-schooled situation may find that a 3 is helpful as it demonstrates that they completed the curriculum successfully (and that could be harder to validate.)
What you submit to your uni when you matriculate will depend on whether you want credit/placement and what score is required. For example, a 3 in FL may fulfill a FL requirement.
The answer, like many answers, is: It depends.
Regardless, that was not the OP’s question - s/he did not take the exam at all. So let’s not be hijacking threads.
For the OP, it is what it is, so it’s pointless dwelling on it. Personally, with a 60% failure rate on the AP Physics 1 exam, I would not have taken it either, and I really doubt that there is a singe AO who would care.
@alwaysdriving
From the College Board website: https://aphighered.collegeboard.org/courses-exams/scoring
A 3 is equivalent to a B-, C+, or C and indicates “qualified.” It doesn’t imply shame, and there are plenty of colleges that will give credit or placement for 3’s, especially for Foreign Language. I can’t confirm, but I suspect that there are very few, if any, highly selective colleges that provide any credit or placement for a 3.
To address the OP and @JanieWalker , I’m sure a “missing” test score or a score of 3 will be viewed in context of the rest of the app. The stronger the app, the less it might matter. The more selective the school, the more it might matter. I don’t know if there’s a right answer.
The other often overlooked reason to take the exam is that many colleges do course registration or housing signup or honor societies or whatever according to the number of course hours completed, which can include AP credit. One of my kids managed to work that to her great benefit in college.
These responses have all been so helpful! But there was something I wanted to ask MWolf and Wating2exhale towards the beginning of the discussion. I wanted to get my AP Physics I teacher to do a letter of recommendation for me. If she could clear up to AOs that I was qualified to take the exam would this help me? I’ve talked to her before about getting a recommendation and she said she’d happily advocate for me.
@ipuppy177 : I would not advise you to make specific reference to, or steer the admissions committe to focus on that aspect of your profile. Speak to the haves, not the have nots.
A recommendation from any teacher which speaks to your intellectual capacity, contribution to the classroom, original thought in approach, measurable growth with the classroom material and positively relay your interaction with your peers, is always a plus to have.
A counselor can make specific reference to a solid reason for the missing AP exam, if you insist on doing so. I would not.