<p>hi all,</p>
<p>I got 5's on all of the 11 APs I took so far. I'll get the award that collegeboard hands out for above 8 AP's, but aside from that, do colleges even care? APs don't seem to play a large role in the college admissions process. The commonapp has 9 spots for APs. I feel like they're much more of a help once you're in college. SAT II's, being required, seem much more important. What's your guys' take on this?</p>
<p>If you're aiming for top-tier colleges, they want you to take the most rigorous, challenging courseload at your school (there's a box on the Common App where your guidance counselor will check how rigorous your courseload is). In most cases, APs are the most rigorous class that you can take at a school that offers APs. </p>
<p>A plus is that the AP courses you take prepare you for the SATII tests - for example, SATII US History is usually taken after you complete a year of AP US History. </p>
<p>Comparing a student taking as many APs as you did (remember, AP stands for Advanced Placement) to a student who chose not to take APs and still scored well on SAT IIs, I think colleges would prefer the former.</p>
<p>Seems like your making this thread to brag about your AP scores. And yes, AP's matter immensely. The rigor of your HS curriculumn, the level of difficult courses you dared to take, all factor into admissions. I don't know how you got all 5's on 11 APs and think otherwise...</p>
<p>You bet they care! AP Classes are held to a higher standard, the tests are longer and harder than the SAT subject tests, and doing as well as you did on so many tests shows how ready for college level work you are. And by the way, some colleges, namely H, have a place on their application for students to list their AP scores- if they weren't a factor in admissions it is doubtfull they would ask for them.</p>
<p>The top 30 or so schools are places for students who aggressively pursue the most difficult courses they can get their hands on. They are not for good, very good, really good, or even excellent students. They are for <em>exceptional</em> students.</p>
<p>Exceptional students don't take Honors Chem when AP Chem is available. Don't take Honors Bio when AP is available.</p>
<p>If an adcom at one of these Top 30 schools sees a student who purposely avoided the best courses at their high school, why should they even consider them? Truth is, they don't. GPA is irrelevant. They avoided the pressure of a truly competitive course.</p>
<p>THe scores themselves are pretty meaningless to anyone but you personally. The class itself (and the fact you took the test) is what is important.</p>
<p>It was hard for me to gauge, because I had only taken 5 AP Tests....but I was in IB (which has 7ish tests) so its kind of hard to measure if I had done enough.</p>
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Exceptional students don't take Honors Chem when AP Chem is available. Don't take Honors Bio when AP is available.
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<p>I feel thats a bit of an oversimplification. As much as I love AP courses, they are just not taught at the same intensity nation wide. In my AP Statistics class this year, it was pretty much Math for the remedial students. We didn't do any practice free responses or multiple choice questions, and everytime people bombed a benchmark, they would just curve it up. Likewise, my AP Literature class was taught by a teacher who I suspect has severe dimentia. We didn't write a single out of class essay, half our in class essays were never graded, we read only two books (Heart of Darkness and Oedipus Rex), in addition to spending two months on a poetry project that was supposed to last two weeks. Meanwhile, the Senior British Literature class read 4 Shakespeare plays, wrote 6 out of class papers in a year, and had regular discussion. Now which class would have been more rigorous?</p>
<p>It honestly doesn't matter all that much that the Brit Lit class was "more rigorous." The colleges are not going to have those anecdotal stories that you told, and will look much more favorably upon those students who enrolled in the AP class (and, I'm sure, did very well).</p>
<p>
[quote]
It honestly doesn't matter all that much that the Brit Lit class was "more rigorous." The colleges are not going to have those anecdotal stories that you told, and will look much more favorably upon those students who enrolled in the AP class (and, I'm sure, did very well).
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<p>Yeah, and I suppose its a pity too. Well, not for me, I was able to slack off in my schools' substandard AP classes and have that edge in college admissions, so I'm not going to be too hung over it.</p>
<p>Look, a kid has the guts to bark with the big dogs or doesn't.</p>
<p>Taking non-AP classes where equivalent subject matter AP classes are taught is a self selection OUT OF THE TOP 30, PERIOD.</p>
<p>No guts, no glory.</p>
<p>
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I feel thats a bit of an oversimplification. As much as I love AP courses, they are just not taught at the same intensity nation wide.
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<p>It is true that so-called "AP courses" vary in depth/difficulty nationwide. AP exams, however, being externally set and graded by the College Board, provide a uniform standard to compare the scholastic achievement of students from different High Schools across the country.</p>
<p>In other words, if I were an adcom at a top 10 university, I wouldn't care so much about how many courses are listed as "AP" in an applicant's HS transcript, but I would be very impressed if that candidate had perfect '5' scores in 11 or so College Board AP exams (especially if those included the really advanced tests like Calculus BC or Physics C !).</p>
<p>I1uRveC0ke, I agree. AP Statistics at my school was mostly taken by students who wanted to avoid honors calculus but still wanted to take a 4th year math course probably for their transcripts. A lot of them didn't seem very motivated to get 4's or 5's.</p>
<p>Important: you take them at school, and do well grade wise
Not important: AP scores</p>
<p>I've heard a lot of people say that AP scores aren't important. But now that the Common App created a separate section for the number of AP courses taken and its scores, will this create more pressure to do better on the test?</p>
<p>noobcake, if a student in applying to a highly competative college, and his AP scores range from 2-3, and another applicant with identical grades/stats has AP scores that range from 4-5, who do you think is the likely admit? Colleges wouldn't ask for AP scores if they weren't interested in using them to evaluate applications.</p>
<p>At my school, only 2 AP classes are offered (Calc AB and English). Will colleges expect students at schools like mine to study on their own to take additional AP tests, or will they understand that students still took advantage of every opportunity, and it's not our fault the school only offers 2 AP classes?</p>
<p>OP need to understand that there are generally only 600-700 Juniors who are National AP scholar in US. So don't underestimate the importance of being one.
Also it will not only help you get into a good school but also help you get out without much problems. If you can handle material at AP level then you will be able to handle the material at most of the college level courses.
So pat your back for being well prepared for a success at whatever college you end up going.</p>
<p>highopes, colleges can't penalize you for the school you go to. Your guidance counselor indicates the rigor of your courseload RELATIVE to that of other students in your school and the colleges look at your courseload the same way too. But if there are AP tests that are related to your interests, you might want to consider it. I want to do something in political science or sociology so I'm gonna take the US and Comparative gov't test next year.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm considering studying for a couple AP's on my own, I'm also interested in political science. We have Honors U.S. History at my school, so I might take the AP test for that with a little extra studying. Darn my school for being so uncompetitive, lol :-P</p>
<p>AP Stats and AP Enviro are both considered "AP Lite". Not a problem if AP Calculus and AP Bio have already been taken, but a big problem if they are taken in lieu of those true AP courses.</p>
<p>It's a shame really, as for non-science college majors, AP Stats is much more applicable to real world problem solving that Calculus. How many times do you need to find the exact acceleration on a single point in a curve, or the area under a curve, in real life?</p>