A good example of why anecdotal evidence is often unreliable, particularly if data is available.
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I agree about unweighted but again the local AOs should know these schools.
I was helping a few friend families this year. One took the Aps that made sense for her profile and one didnât. I stressed that the AP I was suggesting was her natural progression and she got an A in the Junior class and really liked this hard subject. I stressed her reaches would be looking for this rigor. She didnât want to stress out senior year and on so many words told me she didnât want the rigor. I suggest some schools to apply to and she got into them all. She didnât get into her reaches which the other friends daughter did. So yes, I think taking Aps can help when appropriate in my example of two. Lol. I think this is how colleges look at the profile as well. If you can take Aps and do well in them then great. What most families donât get is senior year is a great way to show colleges you are preparing for college.
Neither kid had an amazing amount of Aps. Just the ones that made sense for their profile.
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No one at our school could take more than 8 APs, and 8 is very rare. Generally kids can only take one AP in foreign language and one AP in science (because honors or regular bio, chem, physics is required before you can take the AP, no exceptions, so most kids choose one AP science for senior year. A rare stem loving kid might take 2, but then they are not usually taking FL or social studies APs.) A social studies aficionado can take AP Micro, Gov, Euro, APUSH - and the âtopâ kids will take all those plus one math (rarely 2), one science, one FL, and English. But often they donât get the AP social studies classes because there are a lot of other interesting social studies electives and it depends what fits in your schedule. My older S was advanced in FL from attending an immersion school, and was in post-AP Spanish classes. These were one section only so if they conflicted with something else he could not take that.
The counselors check the highest rigor box for 7+ Ap/Post AP/Honors combined. GPAs are unweighted. Kids do very well in admissions, even with âonlyâ 4-5 APs. One drawback is if you attend a public university, you donât have as many opportunities for AP credits and advanced standing as those who can take 10+ APs at their schools.
I feel like thereâs a bit of a disconnect between the AP employees, College Board overall, and colleges on this.
Ok, good and fine advice to tell student to take fewer AP classes. However, then why is College Board ADDING more AP exams? Like Precalculus or the controversial African-American Studies course.
SoâŠdonât take as many, but hereâs 2 more that you can take.
At the same time, some colleges (Iâm looking at you, all of you who are on the Top 25 US News & World Report list) tell applicants that they want to see students with high rigor and high grades in those hard classes. Therefore, the message is âTake as hard a course load as you can.â Thatâs how you end up with so many posts here on CC from students panicking that their 10 AP classes isnât enough.
âŠtherefore, what if youâre a kid whoâs decided to listen to the AP expertâs advice and youâre just taking a total of, letâs say, 5 AP classes in total across all years of HS. However, your HS doesnât have any restrictions for how many AP classes you can take. And you want to apply to Harvard along with 50 other kids at your school, but maybe at best each year, ONE Ivy League school will accept 2-3 kids tops.
Where does that leave you? Not attending an elite institution. But thatâs not the end of the world because you can get a really great education at hundreds of other places instead.
AND letâs say that at your HS, the only ârigorâ options are AP. Not DE or IB courses. Just AP and maybe some honors courses, too.
But then letâs say that your parents are super mega turbo and are convinced that the ONLY way youâre going to succeed in life is by going to a âtop 25â school? Therefore, in order to appease your mom and dad and get them off your back, you cave and agree to take 4-5 AP course per year. Thus, by the time you graduate from HS, youâre burned out before you even started college.
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Sure, kids burn out because they take too many APâs to appease their parents. But they also burn out because Dad thinks travel soccer at age 8 is the only way to get an athletic scholarship, and by age 12 kid loathes soccer. Or mom is convinced the kid is the next tennis great, and instead of a normal HS experience, the kid is being homeschooled to devote MORE time to tennis. Or both parents think the kid is the next Streisand, and instead of going to prom and working at the frozen yogurt store, the kid is going to auditions and getting hair extensions and interviewing agents-- in order to succeed at a life the kid doesnât want.
So sure- APâs lead to burnout. But so does every single other activity that kids do to appease their parents.
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True and very valid points! But the thread is about AP exams, so thatâs why I left out that other stuff. 
I can see how this might hint at hypocracy - but on the other hand, giving students a broader variety of topics to explore at the AP level, doesnât have to mean more classes should be taken overall, but maybe fewer classes in topics not otherwise chosen if not for that AP designation?
Any more controversial than now suddenly AP Psychology? Maybe seeking controversy where there is none, lies more with the âactorâ. 
HS teachers are not interchangeable. For a HS which cannot attract (or keep) a qualified AP Physics or Calculus teacher, having other advanced options to offer its students is a boon. There are several districts near me which admit to having trouble in the advanced math and sciences, but which have strong language, history, and social science teachers. Why not expand APâs if this is the only way to offer talented students more rigorous options?
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âControversialâ because of political debate on that topic which has occurred in a certain state. Not going to say more about it because then itâll belong on the Politics board and I didnât intend to derail the thread in that direction.
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Here are my thoughts on why I think that taking many APs can be useful for college admissions.
Firstly, as mentioned earlier, you can save the time, hence money, spent in college based on credits given (YMMV).
A second cost-related reason, is that APs are often cheaper than STEM-related ECs. For example, most students donât have the opportunity to compete in the STEM competitions that are desirable in some highly rejective colleges. However, students often have the chance to take a moderate number of STEM-related APs. This will demonstrate interest and a rough level of ability.
A third reason relates to class ranking (and is certainly limited to a fraction of HS), which we know is an important factor for many colleges. In the case of my kidsâ HS, ranking is purely based on weighted GPA. Since APs and honors classes are generally given extra weight, statistically, the only way to rank highly is to take as many weighed AP/honors class as possible (and do well in them). This naturally means, for rank, one has to limit any unweighted classes. A terrible idea IMHO.
I donât think that taking many APs is good, healthy, or even particularly useful. But the reality is, doing many APs is more likely to aid than hurt the admission chances of most students. Whether we like it or not.
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This is the experience at my kidâs average public Title 1 school. My kid is frustrated in the non honors or AP level classes where the students donât care, are disruptive, and the teachers are frustrated. I would guess at more competitive and private schools the âregularâ courses would be a good option, but at some schools there is just too wide of a gap between regular and AP.
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The institutions that are in the best position to address the AP arms race are the competitive high schools, which need to put caps on them. Realistically, I donât think colleges can say, âWe refuse to accept students who have taken the most challenging coursework available. Weâre going to punish students for that.â And we know that the courses are not the same at every high school â a reasonable cap would vary from one school to the next. So it has to happen school by school.
Sure, but the top courses donât have to be AP to attract the motivated students. Those kids are still at the high school, and they will gravitate towards whatever the most demanding courses are, whether they have the AP label or not.
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I donât think there is an arms race. And I am not sure how limiting choice is a great idea. This is just projecting on to others what we think is good for us.
A lot of kids are comfortable with whatever the number of APs they end up doing. High or low.
This is not much different than California trying to dumb down math standards. Some people called the California attempt a national security issue.
Itâs not about the label frankly. As has been clearly shown over the last 130+ posts the underlying issue here is massive differences in school resources. The strong private schools have zero issue with a couple APs as they have the resources for strong rigor whatever the label - some going as far as dropping them entirely and just utilizing their own curriculum. Your average public school simply does not have the resources of a robust AP, honors, standard and remedial track for all subjects. As many posters have said, the difference between AP and standard at many schools is huge - itâs frankly AP and remedial in many subjects.
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I agree that the educational injustice youâre talking about is a much bigger problem than the problem of AP overuse. But this thread is about APâs statement discouraging overuse of APs, and that problem is a problem of highly resourced schools. Itâs one more reminder that absolutely nothing in American education is one-size-fits-all.
AOs come to our kidsâ private HS, and I attended starting when my first was in 9th: selective schools definitely were clear that the highest level/ most challenging classes in core areas is what they look at the transcript for: upward trend is fine, no biggie if you didnt max out in 9th grade, but they want to see you have challenged yourself in multiple areas, and the UNC and UVA reps even mentioned specific classes they knew were very challenging at our school.
Fast forward to tours/admissions sessions: Very similar wording, with emphasis on challenging yourself across the board in ALL core courses ALL four years was emphasized on every top15/Ivy admissions session we attended, mentioning looking at what your school offers and did you challenge yourself maximally in each core area, within your schoolâs curriculum. One even made it clear AP tests âon ownâ for fun without a real course are generally not impressive . Another said if you donât like a certain core area, that is not a reason to avoid the hardest course offered in that area. The emphasis on challenging oneself in coursework was more prominent in the admission sessions for D23 (post-test-optional) than with D21(we did all tours in 10&11th finishing just pre-shut down). The sentiments lined up very well with the majority of knowledgeable opinions expressed on CC.
On the âinterestâ question: our school always has encouraged taking a 6th core class for the top 1/3rd of kids (basically anyone aiming for T25s) in 10-12th, and that one is often in the interest area as long as it is not a regular course. So a history kid can take APGov and APush in 11th; a science kid could take AP Bio and APPhysics, with the rest of the core classes covered. APES is usually discouraged by the college counselors for top 1/3: it is the easy-entry non-gated AP science for average or below average kids in 12th.
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Interesting how different school policies can be. This wouldnât be allowed at our school - you can only take one class per core area per year (so no doubling up on science classes, for example). (Well, and the other notable difference is that our school doesnât offer APUSH or APGov or any similar AP or honors courses in those areas.)
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Absolutely! One really has to know the school well, as far as what is âexpected â AP/other courseloads. We were lucky that our school has teachers and college counselors who encourage the top kids to take certain classes and teachers who teach APs phenomenally well, above and beyond the curriculum (yet no spoon-feeding), yet the homework load isnât too ridiculous . I wonder if a lot of the AP/College Board recommendations for less APs is geared for more âaverageâ students in âaverageâ school situations.
Probably lots of CB stuff makes a lot more sense from their point of view when considering colleges and high schools overall, rather than just the most selective or elite ones.
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I agree with your take @skieurope, that itâs mostly not AOs that need an adjustment. However, right in your quote from Stanford is something that belies this. As many have now commented, AOs absolutely judge rigor in context. While they wonât penalize a kid for taking zero APs at a HS that offers zero, they will absolutely look differently - and not for the better - at a kid taking zero, or two, at a school offering 15. This point has been hammered home by scads of AOs, admissions presentations, etc.
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