<p>Hi everyone, please disregard my username, I'm a junior now haha. I'm currently stuck with a dilemma that I'm trying to quickly resolve. By the end of this year, I'll have taken 7 AP courses and exams at my school. The AP National Scholar award requires that a student take 8 AP exams with an average score of 4 or higher on each exam. Is it worth it for me to self study for another AP? (I'm thinking Psych if it is) All the AP's I took as a sophomore and that I will take as junior are some of the most difficult ones available, but I'm just not sure whether competitive colleges and programs (I'm really thinking about very selective BS/MD programs) really see any worth in an award like this.</p>
<p>bump please help. My AP registration form is due very soon.</p>
<p>Honestly, you should just focus on the AP’s that you are taking right now. 8 AP tests is quite a lot and it’s not good to cram for every test. For me, I’m taking 2 AP’s this year (I’m a junior) and I’m taking 6 AP’s next year. You should wait for next year. However, if you are serious about getting the national scholar award this year, go for it. What can I say about it?</p>
<p>Oh sorry, I forgot to mention that I already have 3 of them completed. I have 4 APs this year. I’m still mulling it over right now, but I think I’m leaning towards not going for the extra one.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t. Just wait. The award is not important other than to say you have it – it will have little importance in the admissions process. You have an whole other year. :)</p>
<p>Don’t self study another one unless you have copious amounts of time to do so. 7 vs 8 APs isn’t a big deal… and you will get the Scholar w/Distinction award if that makes any difference (assuming you don’t bomb the APs you take this year). The last thing you want to do is try to cram in that extra AP and end up doing poorly on the others (or even just getting a few 4s on those original APs when they could have been 5s). Quality > Quantity my friend. </p>
<p>But of course, if those 4 APs you are taking are easy as **** then go ahead and self study that other one.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t bother to list those AP awards on her applications. I’m not even completely sure which one(s) she got, but for anything based only on how many exams you took and what scores you got, all of this is very clearly listed in your application already. She felt it was just a redundant waste of space. So you’re going to list 8 AP scores, and after that you’re going to list, hey I got an award that shows I took 8 AP tests like I just showed you and got the kind of scores I just showed you? I cannot even imagine self-studying an AP simply to go after one of these awards. In my opinion they are really just marketing tools designed to encourage kids to sign up for more of their tests, and I guess it works.</p>
<p>Depends on where you plan to apply. </p>
<p>AP National Scholar honor can be claimed by far fewer people than national merit semifinalist.</p>
<p>“National AP Scholar: Granted to students in the United States who receive an average score of at least 4 on all AP Exams taken, and scores of 4 or higher on eight or more of these exams”</p>
<p>There’s nothing about this award that isn’t completely self-evident from the application. I’m skeptical that colleges would attach any great importance to taking 8 APs rather than 7 APs, just because of that arbitrary label from the college board.</p>
<p>It still matters how many can claim a specific honor and how well one did in those tests. The attached shows a large number at the end of 12th when it makes no difference but lot fewer people have the award at the end of 11th.</p>
<p><a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2013/2013-AP-Scholar-Counts.xls[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2013/2013-AP-Scholar-Counts.xls</a></p>
<p>“It still matters how many can claim a specific honor and how well one did in those tests. The attached shows a large number at the end of 12th when it makes no difference but lot fewer people have the award at the end of 11th.”</p>
<p>Going off of texasrp’s post I went and tallied up the total number of students that received the National AP Scholar Award as Junior’s or prior (did not count AP awards labeled as “Not in HS” or “Not Stated” due to that being insufficient data) and I got a total of 2839 Students (give or take a few). This would mean of the 23,781 National AP Scholars, 11.9% of them are juniors and even lower percentages if going off of all AP Awards or even all students currently enrolled in High School. I am not sure whether or not it is valued by college’s, but getting this award I do not think could hurt you at all unless you would get to focused on it that you suffered in other areas.</p>
<p>My point is that the colleges will see how many AP tests he took, when he took them, and what the scores were. I’m sure they know pretty well what fraction of their applicants successfully completed how many APs by the end of junior year. The labels which college board assigns provides no additional information about the applicant to the colleges that is not already completely apparent from a few seconds looking over the application so to us it just felt like resume-padding. In fact for her it would be less informative, considering that my daughter exceeded the minimum requirements by quite a bit.</p>
<p>Frankly, the award won’t help your application. However, if you really want it, depending on your short-term memory, you could probably get REA CC for AP Gov’t, read the entire thing a week before the exam, and get a five. Not much content in the course, and it’s an easy 5.</p>
<p>An extra AP test by itself is irrelevant. Taking 6, 7, 8 or 9 or listing them as 7, 8, 9 is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Getting 4 or more on 8 separate tests is relevant. It is not easy or else a lot more than 2839 kids applying to college will have this honor. The honor at a glance tells a reader that the student has done well in rigorous classes (not getting into easy vs hard APs discussion). </p>
<p>I told my kids to aim for it and I tell anyone who is close like OP to aim for it. </p>
<p>On a side note, self studying for an AP and doing well also provides an important indicator to an adcom.</p>
<p>" It is not easy or else a lot more than 2839 kids applying to college will have this honor." Actually, I don’t think it’s so hard that the number should be so small. But most kids simply do not have the opportunity to complete that many APs before senior year. Some school policies forbid it. Some schedules just make it too hard.</p>
<p>The common app has a section to list the APs, scores and dates. IMO, enough said. If you got the award and don’t have much else to list, I don’t see any harm, but really it seems like a very poor reason to self-study an AP test and if I were in admissions and saw self studied an AP which just happened to be one of the easiest APs and it just happened to be number 8, I’d be wondering if this student is about learning or about chasing awards.</p>
<p>This is the first year they are allowing many spots for AP. In the past there were a total of 8 spots for AP, IB, and SAT II. It is just a listing.</p>
<p>AP National Scholar, is an honor. Don’t confuse the listing with an honor.</p>
<p>I have not seen past years’ common app. There were 10 spots to list the AP exams taken on this year’s common app. Enough to list all the exams together for this award, neatly lined up. I agree that if that information had to be scattered throughout the application, it would be best to call attention to it.</p>
<p>If you list all your classes and you have 4.0 in every one of them, I also think it would be redundant to list something like “dean’s list for all 4.0 classes”. The reader can see that.</p>
<p>My other daughter was applying for something and she insisted on removing something from her list of honors. It was a lesser honor and she felt that even having it there detracted from the impression given by her more important accomplishments, like she was reaching for every single thing she did and trying to fill up as much space as possible.</p>
<p>From the sticky thread on this forum about self-studying APs:
“People generally take easy APs not for college credit, but basically just to “look good” with another 5 on the score report. Other times, people are aiming for National AP Scholar or other distinctions and they use easy APs as filler exams to boost up their total number of exams taken.” I guess it just depends if you think the adcoms will be impressed by your initiative or if you think they will be wondering about your motives. Maybe you should ask them.</p>
<p>The sticky thread is also an opinion just like this thread. I think the quote above is the silliest one of them all.</p>
<p>The consensus usually is that people take AP exams to validate the rigor of the their high school grades. So someone having a A or A+ in an AP class in high school is meaningless if the AP grade ends up being 2 or 3 and shows the school curriculum is weak.</p>
<p>The particular APs allow people to show their affinities in school. There is really no such thing as an easy 5 when 7.7% get one in AP Environmental Science. Same applies for AP Calculus BC being a hard 5 when 45% make the cut. All it shows is that half the students can get 5 as long as they like math but although many claim APES is easy, under 10% get that easy 5. The so called self study easy 5 in US Govt - 11.2%.</p>
<p>[2013</a> AP Exam Score Distributions](<a href=“2012 AP Exam Score Distributions”>2012 AP Exam Score Distributions)</p>
<p>@texas, the percent scoring 5 are pretty meaningless because the populations taking those exams are self-selected. By your reasoning, physics B must be much harder than physics C, because fewer students get 5’s on the B exam. But obviously, it’s not.</p>
<p>I didn’t say colleges won’t be impressed by a lot of high AP scores. Of course they will look favorably at that. But in my opinion, they won’t be impressed by an award which says you got a lot of high AP scores, when they can already see that perfectly well in 5 seconds of looking at your application. That award says nothing they didn’t already know about you.</p>
<p>“the percent scoring 5 are pretty meaningless because the populations taking those exams are self-selected.”</p>
<p>They are not since many schools force people to take the test if they are in an AP class unless you want to define this as only those who are doing it on their own. The school districts have rules in place that determine whether someone taking a class should take the test or not and many who require pay for the test. Our school district pays for the test but requires everyone who took the class to take the test. </p>
<p>1, 2 don’t pass. 3, 4, 5 are considered pass but colleges decide whether they want to give credit for 3 and 4 or not and whether the class should have a credit at all. Since there are many colleges out there which would give you credit only for a 5, it is important to see how many can make it there.</p>
<p>" didn’t say colleges won’t be impressed by a lot of high AP scores. Of course they will look favorably at that. But in my opinion, they won’t be impressed by an award which says you got a lot of high AP scores, when they can already see that perfectly well in 5 seconds of looking at your application. That award says nothing they didn’t already know about you. "</p>
<p>If your logic is correct, people should just ignore all honors. Next version of commonapp should do away with it.</p>