<p>Do any of the AP scholar designations help more than a miniscule amount in admissions?</p>
<p>The designations themselves are utterly meaningless, I believe.</p>
<p>If you can get State Scholar, that will be significant…but if you can get to that point, the sheer number of AP exam scores that’s listed on your application probably will speak for themselves =p</p>
<p>aps don’t play any major role in admission decisions, unless you take get 5 on test that is not offered at school and you’re clearly interested in, say physics C. ap scores are self-reported. one could use ap scores to you may want to support, supplement or supplant transcript, as the case may be. simply taking a laundry list of test just so you can be state scholar is meaningless.</p>
<p>I disagree. Taking an absurd number of AP exams “just so you can be state scholar” and doing well on them proves, if nothing else, that you are capable of setting and chasing after challenging goals and then succeeding (which requires motivation, the ability to use resources, time management skills), a quality that is useful, if not necessary, at MIT.</p>
<p>^ Then again, it means you apparently have nothing better to chase but AP distinctions.</p>
<p>Why chase AP distinctions? Why chase an MIT degree? Why chase anything? Chasing things is good in general. Chasing things is fun. Chasing things gives us purpose in life. Chasing things leads to progress.</p>
<p>Furthermore, chasing AP distinctions does not preclude you from doing other fun things in high school. Though I certainly chased AP distinctions in high school, it was far from the only thing I chased.</p>
<p>Eh. I’m advocating chasing worthwhile things. I consider an MIT degree worthwhile, I consider an AP distinction kind of “meh”. A dime a dozen. Performing your best academically, or working on awesome projects, or getting into a multitude of other activities seem like a better focus to me.
I happened to get an AP distinction on the side, and don’t think it was particularly valuable to my life. The other things I did - riding, flying, martial arts, acting - they turned out to be far more meaningful. Dunno, YMMV.</p>
<p>A friend of mine just said something I think is pretty helpful: “Go for it if it’s doable, but don’t strain yourself too much. It’s good but it’s not worth sacrificing other things for.”</p>
<p>I personally did take a lot (I think a dozen my junior year) of AP exams, in part because I was interested in the subject material but also because I wanted to challenge myself. It’s not something I regret, and I’m a proponent of self-studying APs as a good way to introduce yourself to subjects you’re vaguely interested in but don’t know enough about to decide what to pursue in more depth in college. I think self-studying APs helped me prepare for MIT’s workload, and changed my understanding of “difficult” and “possible.” I did plenty of other things in high school as well, but none of them challenged me quite as much. In that sense, APs were meaningful.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think your friend is absolutely right here. Self-studying more material can definitely be worthwhile, and if it happens to get you an AP designation, all the better :P</p>
<p>I doubt AP scholar distinctions, or other similar awards, like being a National Merit Semifinalist, matter at all. Admissions officers should see that you took AP classes, or self-studied, or had high SAT scores, etc. They don’t need extra information saying the same thing.</p>
<p>I took 8 APs by the time of application, 14 by the time of senior year - what I think is the most valuable out of doing that was that all but 5 of them were self-studied. I have an entire thread on this in the AP forum that I wrote my senior year, where I emphasize that self-studying APs can be used effectively to show initiative if one is coming (especially) from a high school with low academic resources. I think this is what makes having a crapload of AP scores special.</p>
<p>If you want to compare across academic titles though, let me tell you what is useless - National Merit Semifinalist/Finalist and all AP designations below National Scholar. I must emphasize though that State Scholar is usually quite an achievement and nothing to sneeze at, since it’s only awarded to the top boy and girl from each state (this award is also otherwise known as the “Best Donor to the CollegeBoard” award =p). When I was in high school, I heard the TX State Scholar took 27 APs to qualify (the caveat of this award is that usually you will achieve this status in senior year, so I guess to answer the question AP scholar designations at the time of application don’t really matter at all).</p>
<p>^ so what good is the National AP scholar if you get it after graduation? Can it help if you apply to grad school?</p>
<p>High school achievements will not help you in grad school applications, no. If you’re in science, grad school profs want to see your ability to do science, get funding, and get published, to help them progress their careers. Supposedly they care about recommendations, research, and GPA, in that order.</p>
<p>
Oh, don’t be so cynical! (When a fifth-year PhD student says you’re being cynical, then you know you’re really being cynical.)</p>
<p>They want to know that you’re good at doing science so you can join their group of smart people doing cool stuff. :)</p>