AP recommends students take fewer AP classes

Sure, but I was talking statistical averages. Of course there will be all kinds of exceptions or there would be no standard deviation. The point is, UCLA’s stats demonstrate that the majority of the time they take admit students who have taken 18+ AP, DE or IB courses, suggesting they bias toward valuing students who take a lot of those courses. If they gave no weight to students taking more than 2 a year in schools that offers far more, their average should be lower. Unless, of course, one wants to argue that the reason for the high AP/IB/DE stats is that the OOS students who otherwise independently demonstrate their excellence to UCLA a majority of the time also just happened to take a ton of those courses but that it was incidental to their acceptances. But even if you believe that, it wold suggest a very high correlation between the type of student they admit and the type who gravitates toward a lot of those courses at schools where they are available.

I also see from your other post that your kids HS only allowed 6 AP courses. As you note in your post, that would be seen as “most rigorous” in your school profile. Which isn’t really applicable to what UCLA would look for from a school that offered dozens of AP courses without enrollment restriction.

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