<p>Does Cornell use AP scores in the admissions process? Is a student penalized if he/she has took an AP course, but decides not to take the AP exam?</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>From my understanding they factor in but not a lot and if you take the class and not the exam don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>I decided not to take some of the tests, but everything else in my app is fine (i.e. sat and sat ii scores), so perhaps they won’t really care…</p>
<p>AP scores are not used for admission…that’s what subject tests are for. They just want to see that you took the class.</p>
<p>They care about it a little bit - to see how much you learned in your ap class relative to others.</p>
<p>How much they care about the AP tests depends on the student. Please read the discussions over on the AP forum about this. Or, if you would like, I’d be happy to summarize a few key points.</p>
<p>The scores are not used in admission because they are not required. However I do not think it would be looked upon favorably if you opted out of the test after taking the course. This is the answer that My D’s GC got when she called a Cornell adcom with this very question when my D didn’t want to take her AP calc exam…and she was already accepted!</p>
<p>AP’s are most useful for avoiding certain lower-level classes and getting to more core major stuff earlier.</p>
<p>@WongTongTong: Could you elaborate? My subject test scores, and SATs are all in the range for Cornell…</p>
<p>Because you do not submit your AP scores until after you enroll in a college (any college in the US, not just Cornell), the colleges do not care about your score. There is no way to prove before or after if you wrote all 5s in your common app, and in reality you got all 3s. They do want to know if you have taken the AP “track”/course load. And of course they want to know how well you did in the class. That is where your transcript comes in. Colleges will figure out if you are getting a straight A in an AP class, you will most likely get a 4 or a 5. Some High Schools make students take the exams if they took the class. Some dont.</p>
<p>I think it depends. Good scores can help you, bad scores probably won’t hurt you. AP classes vary wildly in quality in terms of whose teaching them, so a smart person with a bad teacher might not be in a favorable situation to earn a 4 or 5. That said, I’ve always felt (and I think I saw data on this somewhere else) that AP scores are the best predictor of first-year college performance because they do approximate intro level college courses. Anyone who I see on these boards applying to Cornell with good stats, but mostly 3’s or lower on their AP tests raises a red flag because it’s not obvious this person will perform well at Cornell.</p>
<p>They trust that what you put on your app is what you got. Same deal with extracurriculars. They do care about AP scores, just not a whole lot (unless they’re on the whole not very good).</p>