<p>I've been lurking around this forum for a while now and I am really discouraged to see the number of AP classes that a lot of people are taking. My school only offers 8 AP courses while other schools seem to offer more and allow their students to take AP courses as freshmen. Looking at that, I am worried that I will be seen as inferior and someone with more AP classes will be able to get into a better college. Do colleges take into account which AP classes a high school offers and when the high school allows the students to take AP classes? Or am I just screwed in terms of being accepted into a good college just because my school didn't let me take AP classes as a freshman?</p>
<p>Colleges should take into account how many APs your school offers. If you take everything that your school offers, your counselor should put that you took the most rigorous course possible on her rec, and from what I’ve heard, course rigor is much more important than the number of AP tests taken.</p>
<p>By the way, I share your frustration with the not-letting-students-take-AP-tests-as-freshmen thing. (My school doesn’t let people take APs until junior year. It’s something I am sort of resentful of, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Just accept it and work with it. :))</p>
<p>By the way, what do you mean by “good colleges?”</p>
<p>By “good colleges” I mean non state schools, private schools, and other schools that have less than a 20% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>You could always self-study APs. This would more than help you compete with kids who’ve taken more APs, since self-studying shows initiative, determination, and discipline and is very impressive to colleges.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, you could show that through other means. Scores aren’t everything.</p>
<p>Not all non-state schools and private schools have acceptance rates below 20%, and there are some very good unversities that are state schools, but for the purpose of answering your question, someone from my school (who didn’t even take all the APs offered) got into Brown and Princeton, I got into Northwestern, and a few other people got into Notre Dame and University of Chicago (I don’t know if you consider those “good” colleges or not, since their acceptance rates are higher than 20%).</p>
<p>Hope this helps! Good luck!</p>