<p>I've taken 10 APs so far and gotten 5s on all of them, and plan on taking at least 5 more this year. Especially in economics, where I plan to major, should I use my Econ APs to place out of the intro classes, or retake those classes for a high GPA?</p>
<p>For one, there's not going to be 10 advanced classes for you to "place into." For example, if you get a 5 on AP Euro, there's no "European History 101" to place out of in favor of "European History 201." </p>
<p>Second, you're making a faulty assumption that you're going to get an easy A by slacking off in an intro class. For example, the regular general chem class is going to require a fair amount of work for an A because there's lots of people in the class who have strong chemistry backgrounds.</p>
<p>For econ, if you got 5's on both micro and macro and feel like you have a very strong background, I'd skip out of it. Econ classes aren't that hard at Columbia if you can do math, so you might as well just try to get a doable A in intermediate micro / macro</p>
<p>That's sound advice. I ended up retaking a Calc class that I could have placed out of, and it was an easy A. But most other disciplines have much harder intro classes and even harder 2nd-tier classes. You may want to place out of Principles of Econ if you're studying a bunch of econ now, but even that class will be a good refresher.</p>
<p>Definitely accept any credits you get for your AP tests. I got credit for Bio, English Lang & Lit, and Euro & US History - 3 each, total of 15. And that was huge. But I didn't use them to place out of anything, they were just spare credits in case I was running short when graduation was approaching - and I ended up needing every one.</p>
<p>You would be surprised....A's aren't as easy to come by as you might imagine they are :) There's a lot more going on in college, it's an at accelerated pace, and the fact that you might THINK it's an easy A would make you not pay as much attention/lead you to not do as well as you could. I would skip out of Intro Econ- I hear it's not exactly an easy A type of class.
Also, it is VERY frustrating relearning and being tested again on stuff you already did when you have so many opportunities to explore and take wonderful classes. Just a thought.</p>
<p>Another point I thought of -- the easy A classes are the upper division elective / seminar classes, not the intro classes. The small upper division classes are easy because there's no need for the professors to sort people by grades at that level, it's hard to curve a class with 10-15 people, and the profs give people good grades because they want people to take their classes. The faster you get through all your requirements, the more you'll have the opportunity to take that sort of class.</p>
<p>I believe there's a maximum of 16 credits that are allowable from AP's that they will accept. That's the equivalent of about 4-5 college classes you can opt out of.</p>
<p>So far in Gen Chem this year, only about 30% of the material covered was in the AP Chem curriculum.</p>
<p>Karot</p>
<p>Just curious</p>
<p>Are you in the one semester intensive G Chem or the one year General Chemistry class? Of the new material not covered from AP Chemistry is it familiar material from high school just more indepth or is it brand new concepts never covered in your AP course??</p>
<p>my info is 4 years' dated but it was a lot of new material and several steps beyond what we had learned in high school chem. The very first class started with a theoretical derivation of pressure of which one consequence was PV=nRT. we got into some crazy thermodynamics that went way beyond what the AP chem class covered. It was fun, it was challenging, and the A- I got there was definitely the grade I was proudest of my freshman year, way ahead of the A+ in calc or compsci. Plus I never had to do a silly research paper for G-chem (if they still do that) second semester.</p>
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I believe there's a maximum of 16 credits that are allowable from AP's that they will accept. That's the equivalent of about 4-5 college classes you can opt out of.
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<p>Not to split hairs, but opting out vs. getting AP credits aren't synonymous. Like, I got placed into differential equations and I just got like 5 credits for AP calculus (which was the same that people who placed into calc 2 got).</p>
<p>No, I would take the credit. How boring, to take a HARDER version of a class that you already passed. Even if its not harder, you have to put all that work into some BS, when you could be learning something NEW and interesting!</p>