<p>What is Chicago's policy on accepting APs? I get that it's probably pretty limited, seeing as it is a top school, but for 5s, will they give exemption/placement?</p>
<p>From what I can tell, they generally only give AP credit for calculus and the sciences. At least, that’s the only credit that will really help you. The other tests can be counted toward electives. This is a bit of a generalization.</p>
<p>I think it is very generous with placement (which is really only relevant with math, sciences, language), and pretty generous with elective credit (i.e., if you have a bunch of APs and want to graduate in three years, with hardly any electives, that’s do-able). In many ways, though, they’re irrelevant. Most of the people with 5s on Calculus BC wind up taking Honors Calculus; you have to have a lot more math than just the AP to feel comfortable in a higher level course at Chicago. Anyone who is pre-med has to take the basic science courses anyway, and they cover a lot of stuff that APs don’t, so not many people choose to skip them. I don’t think you can get out of the intro Economics courses with the Economics APs, and I don’t think you would want to. Stuff like Government, English, the histories – there aren’t any required courses that correspond to that at Chicago, except in the Core, and you can’t use APs there, so there isn’t any placement advantage. Foreign language 4s or 5s will get you out of the language competency requirement. I don’t know about Psychology or Computer Science.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that not many people make much use of their AP credits, other than to place into honors sections of math and science (which you can do without the AP credits anyway), or to get out of math or language requirements.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about APs, but I do know that Chicago + IB = Love, (although UChicago doesn’t accept a lot of IB credits.)</p>
<p>JHS is spot on. You go to Chicago because you want to learn, learn fast, and learn in depth. You don’t go to Chicago because you want to graduate in three years. </p>
<p>If you read the fine print so to speak online where they discuss AP credit, you will see that Chicago is reasonably generous with AP credits, but recognizes the big limitation of AP courses - that they’re not real college courses. They’re too watered down. So what the place does is offer alternative tracks for folks who took APs, like the Bio AP5 sequence, offer placement testing for anyone and so forth.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of what happens in practice, my D, who had a bunch of 5s on APs, including Bio, chem, phy and calc, took AP5 Bio and honors Chem. In each, they blew by the AP material in a few weeks, so very little of the courses were review. she used AP credit for Physics and placed out of Math, so I think she got some credit for those. However, the credits were meaningless because she took full course loads each year.</p>
<p>Curiously, APs are not much advantage for placement either, because Chicago uses a combination of tests and individual assessment in deciding placement for many courses. Put another way, you got the guts to move up, they’ll probably let you. But few students EVER complain about not being challenged in a course. </p>
<p>The reason Chicago does not give specific credit for social science or humanities courses is due to the core.</p>
<p>S1 got 5s on both parts of Physics C and received credit for all of the Physics 12000 series (which completed that Core requirement).</p>
<p>It is possible to get credit for Comp Sci AB, but only if one starts at the next higher level. The Comp Sci dept. was very flexible in helping S find an appropriate placement.</p>
<p>AP US Gov’t AND Comp Gov’t will get you one elective credit. AP World and AP Eng Lang – no credit, even with 5s.</p>
<p>S tested out of Calc and I’m not sure if he gets BC credit because he’s a math major. Warning: The risk in accelerating too much in math at Chicago is that the calculus sequences (definitely honors 16000 and possibly 15000 as well) also include Lin Alg. If you don’t have a GOOD grounding in Lin Alg, it can get really tough. AP Stat gets one credit in certain circumstances. (I think S got elective credit because I don’t think math majors can get major credit for it.)</p>
<p>AP credit does not show on one’s transcript til second year, so I am still not sure for which courses S actually received course credit vs. elective credit vs. no credit at all. AP credit also varies depending on the department one declares as a major.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Everyone takes HUM/SOSC/Civ. Placement testing works well and there is latitude for individual circumstances. AP becomes irrelevant within days of arriving on campus.</p>
<p>As for Chicago + IB = <3, from Divine Comedy’s keyboard to G-d’s ears (or IM)!!!</p>
<p>In looking at Chicago’s AP credit table, it is clear that a humanities or soc sci major who took lots of Science APs would gain more than a science major who took lots of hum and soc APs. </p>
<p>Funny thing is that I bet you’ll find few hum or soc majors who took many science APs!</p>
<p>I have a “soc major” who took a fair number of science APs, plus Calculus BC. And it didn’t do him a whit of good, since he took everything over again in the process of deciding that he would really rather be in the social sciences.</p>