<p>@texas, huh? Most honors are not something you automatically get. If you play a varsity sport, that doesn’t ensure you are going to have a school record or some kind of MVP coach’s award or whatever. If you play an instrument, that doesn’t ensure that you will be first chair. If you write for your school’s literary magazine or newspaper, that doesn’t ensure you will win an award for excellence. Listing those awards shows colleges the level of your achievement in the activity you listed. With the AP’s you already have the grades listed to document your level of achievement.</p>
<p>For a kid whose other interests don’t naturally support it, a sudden interest in self-studying one of the “easy” APs to get the minimum requirements for this award might come off as someone who is more about impressing colleges than passionate about learning. That’s just my opinion, but I also find the general attitude of many of the self-studiers, the proliferation of “what is the easiest test to self-study–all I want is a good score to impress colleges” threads on here to be rather sad. I’m not saying all self-study is bad, actually my daughter is about to start on Physics C, but it’s something that makes a lot of sense for her interests and major; she’s really excited about physics and she’s definitely not in it just to rack up more AP scores–she may not take some of the other AP tests for her classes this year, just because they do cost us money and by then we’ll know if her college would even accept them. And I think most schools don’t require AP tests. How could they in the end force a family to cough up all that money? Are they really going to flunk a kid in 4 AP classes whose family says, sorry we just cannot pay $350 for tests that we don’t feel will benefit our child?</p>
<p>Oh, and the populations are self-selected. In many schools, the better math students are placed in BC, and the weaker ones in AB. And the AP stats teacher in our school said on the first day of class, “I know you’re all here because stats is easier than calculus.” Surprise, surprise, stats has even lower percent than AB of getting 5’s. The low grades for AP human geo probably have more to do with the fact that it’s one of the few APs attracting many freshmen and many of them probably aren’t really up to it, or just lack experience in handling classes more difficult than middle school. I see very good agreement between comments on this site and what my daughter says are “slacker” AP’s at her high school. The kids know, and many of them choose accordingly.</p>