I don’t think they can publicly say anything about APs because of what happened the last time the Harvard director said it - the rush to take more APs leading a lot of unnecessary stress. And they’re not available everywhere and are expensive to most Americans, as others have pointed out. However your high school plays a bigger role in this, if the top students in the class have taken a few APs and done well on them, non-submissions and 3s (if submitted) may be a small factor, of course not as big as say gpa, rigor, other test scores. This is not causation of course, to be fair, people with 5s across the board also get rejected from the more selective ones.
2 Likes