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<p>We kind of agree on this. As for the rest of your points on AP courses I won’t argue any further than to say that while AP exams were never as important as the main criteria (SATs/GPA/Essays/EC/Recommendation Letters), they are not completely worthless. I would never tell someone not to take it, if they are financially able to. It’s not worth the risk.
Admissions representatives did mention that AP exams are much less important than the actual exam grade. I never said this is not true (and your quotes do support the point) but rather that a holistic review process of the applications ensures that even the smallest and most seemingly insignificant details can change the decision for or against you. </p>
<p>I do have to respond to one other statement: </p>
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<p>The key to succeeding in college is up for debate, at least you can say that it is not clearly defined. If we assume the a successful college student has the high GPA (rather than the one walking away with having learned the most, simply because that’s not something I can quantitatively account for), then it reasonable to say that an AP grade is a fair way to judge said success. Many classes in college have 3 or 4 exams total, some don’t have “quizzes”; when a large portion of one’s grade is dependent on performance on exams that require a clear recollection of large amounts of information, it becomes more like the AP Exam than the AP Class. Some students at schools like MIT don’t even have to show up to class to ace it (my friends have been told this by interviewers and later confirmed it when they went to MIT).</p>
<p>Bottom line: While I do believe that taking AP classes is more important in college admissions that simply acing many exams, it is a fallacy to say that AP exams are unrepresentative of college courses. High School classes are nothing like college classes, and by that fact alone, neither are AP classes.</p>