At my school, i am taking the hardest combination of senior classes, including 5 AP’s. A few other students have 5 AP’s, but they aren’t as difficult as my unique combination (there is nobody taking the same combination as me). In college admissions, would 5 “easier” AP’s on a schedule be viewed the same as 5 “harder” AP’s? For example, would they know the distinction between euro and art history, or environmental and chem? The reason im asking is because im a little bummed that i opted to take all of the notoriously hard APs in my school when i could have taken five of the relatively easier ones and received better senior grades.
Yes colleges do know the differences in how rigorous AP classes are. They know that AP chemistry is a much more difficult subject then per se AP psychology. And many colleges don’t even give course credit for AP’s like human geography or environmental science
That’s a very good question- I wonder if colleges are actually aware of AP iniquities. Last year I took Lang, Stats, and Chem, and the ~20 hours/week I spent studying chem seemed to have virtually no effect on my grade or score (A-, 3) compared to what the 0 hours/week I spent outside of class had on the other two (A’s, 4s). I also think it’s a bit unfair how different teachers in different schools grade; our chem teachers made tests 80% of our grade- and used only college board released questions. So if you got an 80% on the test, it would result in a 5 on the exam but in the class we got a B.
I am sure the adcom are aware of the different difficulties of different AP.
All HS have teachers that grade more or less strictly, so that it’s irrelevant as it cancels out.
However college admission officers know very well that there are different groups of APs:
- AP Human Geog, Psych, Stats, and Environmental Science are considered “AP Lites”. They’re best used a a complement to the other APs or as gateway courses for younger students or for students who want rigor but can’t handle another AP course in that area.
- AP core classes are the most respected: AP calculus, AP History, AP Foreign Language, AP Bio/Chem/Physics, AP English.
- The other APs are considered complementary to the core classes, rigorous (and definitely stronger than AP Lites) but not as important as the core classes.
However, top colleges also don’t like the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to APs and only expect 4-8 (up to 10 if you include AP Lites) APs over the course of a HS career. They want to see a careful selection reflecting interests and rigor. Stanford actually spells it out thus: “its not a game of who has the most APs wins”.
A lot of top high schools have limits on how many APs you can take in one year. Usually for those schools it is 3, they may make an exception and let someone take 4. So sometimes when a college sees 5 APs in the same year, they think they are nor truly rigorous AP curriculums
APs vary tremendously in rigor between High Schools. Art History is a killer at some schools and AP Euro at others.
How colleges view it really depends on how your GC checks the “most rigorous” box. Cynical me says that your school is going to check “most rigorous” regardless of the rigor in your AP courses because, well, it’s AP, but you’d have to ask your GC.
In terms of giving credit, schools do differentiate. A 5 in Environmental Science may not get you out of courses that a 5 in AP Chem will. Depends on the school.
But then again, many top high schools do not set a limit on # of APs you can take in a year. (i.e. my school which is consistently in top 10 in national rankings.) Aparantly all the teachers can count the number of students who got 3s or lower throughout their teaching career with their fingers.