By the end of my junior year, I will have taken 6 AP courses; I will be an AP Scholar with Distinction by the time I apply for college. After senior year, however, I will be a national AP scholar.
I could self study two subjects that I am very interested in, which are pretty easy, to be a national AP scholar by college application time. But will it matter that much? Colleges will see my senior course load, and assume I am headed in the right path?
IMO, the college board made up these awards precisely to sucker kids like you into handing them even more money. Colleges know what the “easy” APs are and they’d rather see kids doing things more valuable than cramming for easy APs from test prep books to puff up their resume. No, it won’t matter that much.
Since you list the APs taken and the grades on the common app anyhow, these so-called “awards” are really just a label on the work you’ve already shown, providing absolutely no new information, so pretty much resume stuffing. My kid didn’t bother to list hers since it was redundant information.
Ok cool ty
Nope. As @mathyone said the College Board has done a great job of making people drink the Kool-Aid (I’m looking at you, AP Capstone). This is a prime example. Any of the AP Scholar awards is about half a step up from making the Honor Roll IMO. I exaggerate, but only slightly. But self studying 2 AP exams just to get a meaningless certificate is an opportunity wasted, IMO.
While I do not disagree with the the other respondents…technically you do not have to list your AP test scores on the Common App. By listing the College Board “Awards” it is a way of indicating that you scored decently on some of the tests. D16 was an “award winner”, having scored very well on some AP tests and really poorly on others. She did not list the results of her 11 AP tests on her applications. It was a way for her to reveal that she did well without listing an embarrassing score.
Technically, I don’t think you have to list your AP tests taken on the common app, do you? (Please verify, I’m not sure about this). I guess you have a point, but I expect the colleges would infer that if you chose not to list the scores that some weren’t good. Why else would you omit them? And so I’m still not convinced that listing the award but not the scores makes a better impression, since the conclusion would be the same either way–you had some good scores and some bad ones.
Also, I think we can assume that the OP has/is confident of good scores or else they wouldn’t qualify for National AP scholar by taking another 2 tests. And moreover, that the OP is reasonably confident of getting good scores on the next 2 tests. Or else this entire question is moot.
Correct. Listing scores is optional.
Also correct - that is a risk.
But again - red herrings. An AP scholar award is just not going to move the needle that much.
My first kid had it, my rising junior won’t. I’m not worried.
I don’t think it really makes that much difference to an admission committee in the end. Not listing AP test scores did not hinder D16’s applications. She is my only point of reference.