<p>I am currently a junior in public high school. I am taking AP Physics, APUSH, AP Forensics, and Pre-Calc. The school says that we should 'buy' our AP Credits from Mercy College at $50 per credit. I plan on applying to Ivys and Stanford, etc. and don't know if this purchase is necessary. Do I still get to take the AP exam if I don't buy them? Will I be recognized for the AP classes and exams I take if I don't buy the college credits now? The deadline is 10/15 today before midnight and I need to make a decision!!</p>
<p>I may not be the ideal source, but hey! you’re in a hurry.</p>
<p>I don’t get why the school is suggesting you buy “AP Credits” or even what that means.</p>
<p>You can take an AP exam without buying anything (other than paying the College Board). You don’t even need to have taken an AP class to take an AP exam. I took the AP English exam without taking any AP English course - though that was in those now long-forgotten days when most schools didn’t even have an EP English course.</p>
<p>Once you get a score on an AP Exam, what effect it has on you depends on the policies of the college you go to. Depending on the college, you make get credit or placement into higher-level classes. So far as I know, none of them (other than, I suppose, Mercy College itself, in the unlikely event you go there) will care, or maybe even know, whether you “bought” something from Mercy College.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply! Basically they say that these Mercy College credits are actual college credits that are for real college classes that equate approximately to the AP classes I am taking nad are kind of like the credits you get at a 2 yr school that you’d be able to transfer to any college you attend as long as they accept them- but is it necessary if I take the AP exams?</p>
<p>You don’t want college credits. All you might accomplish is to turn yourself into a transfer applicant, which will make it considerably more difficult for you to be accepted.</p>
<p>If you take the AP exams, you may or may not get credit at the college you wind up going to. It just depends on what their policy is. FWIW, Yale - at least - only gives you credit for AP if you want to graduate in less than four years. But they won’t give you credit for courses you “took” at another college unless they accept you as a transfer student, which they likely won’t.</p>
<p>I think I get it now, looks like a money making scam by Mercy College, a lot of hs students are paying the total of like $650 for these credits. Thank you for your help.</p>
<p>Are the students paying to have their AP exam results converted into college credits on a Mercy College transcript, or are they paying to actually take a class at Mercy College?</p>
<p>One problem with enrolling at Mercy on paper long enough to get the AP credits converted into college credits is that for the rest of your life you will need to have a Mercy transcript sent whenever you apply to college, grad school, or for a job that asks for all of your academic transcripts. Since there is no guarantee whatsoever that Mercy’s courses will transfer to another institution, and you have no intention of enrolling at Mercy for a regular class, it looks to me like this is just creating a huge long-term headache for you.</p>