<p>I gave my AP exams at the end of my junior year and recently got my scores. The exams I gave covered topics from senior year courses (I don't live in the US but I'm a permanent resident) and I gave them to challenge myself. (self studied and prepared for only 1 month)</p>
<p>I wrote AP calculus BC, AP Chemistry, AP physics C: mech. and E&M. The problem is that I performed really bad on 3 of them and did moderately well on 1.
I will take it again after my senior year and will probably get 5's on all of them,but, should I submit the scores that I have and mention that I'll be taking it again after my senior year or, will that just hinder my chances of getting accepted? </p>
<p>Will MIT understand the fact that I gave the exams without any prior introduction to the topics and could possibly perform better after the topics were introduced?</p>
<p>There is a section on the MIT application where you can explain or say anything else that you would like to. This might be something to include, but I don’t know enough to make a judgement as to whether they’ll be sympathetic to your situation.</p>
<p>How really bad is really bad? How moderately well is moderately well? Report any 4s or 5s. 3s are also pretty good for self-studying a year early. Reporting 2s and below shows that you are open and honest and willing to accept your failures, which I personally think is valuable (but that is me personally, and I am not involved in MIT admissions).</p>
<p>I think it’s really impressive that you self-studied AP Calculus BC, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics C, because those are the very three subjects I don’t know that I would have been able to learn well on my own, and AP Chemistry and AP Physics C are three particularly tough AP exams. I got 4s in AP Chemistry and AP Electricity and Magnetism, and that was after taking the classes in school.</p>
<p>The only difficulty here is that plenty of MIT applicants take and do well in AP Calculus BC, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics C in eleventh grade. But this is almost always after taking the corresponding classes. MIT admissions is also context-dependent, which means that if you do not have the opportunity to take AP Chemistry, AP Physics C, or AP Calculus BC before senior year, you are not expected to.</p>
<p>If I were you I would report your scores and explain that you self-studied for a month and took the exams for fun and for a challenge in the additional information section, as cheerioswithmilk suggested. You are likely to do much better when you take the actual classes, and having self-studied the AP exams will likely enhance your understanding of the material in the next school year by giving you a broad overview of the subject material before you approach it for real, allowing you to look a little deeper than you might have and really, really enjoy the subject the second time around. I might mention that too. Ultimately you should decide for yourself. None of us know you or your application like you do.</p>
<p>Why did you only prepare for one month?</p>
<p>I think that’s relevant because most people sign up for APs in fall, so you would know about them far in advance, and if you weren’t taking the class, you should be self studying. If there’s a real reason, like an unexpected illness or something, I don’t think that’d be a problem. However, if you had all year and just put off studying because you were busy, that doesn’t look as excusable IMO. But I am not an admissions officer by any means, so I could be totally wrong.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker by any means, and you don’t have to report APs, so don’t worry about it too much. Reporting them won’t give you much of an edge as >60% of the applicants take AP/IB courses.</p>
<p>
I think in my school we signed up in early spring, but I might be wrong.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t offer AP exams but does offer IB (which I got a scholarship for) however, I didn’t pursue the IB curriculum because the national board was much more harder and seemed like a good challenge (no offense to the IB curriculum). I also thought that I could give my AP exams and cover the courses that they taught in IB. Later, what I found out, was that I had exams a month before the AP exams and I couldn’t study both of them throughout the year. </p>
<p>The problem was that the AP courses were much different from what I was learning and they contained topics from my senior year (which I found out recently).
So I decided to strengthen my basics first, and then do the senior level courses later during the 1 month gap,because, I had no other option.</p>
<p>There are no classes for AP exams here, but the national board does cover most of the topics required for the AP exams.
And that’s how I ended up in this dilemma</p>