Do AP scores matter?

Applying to College
1

Hi so I am a bit confused on whether college admissions officers consider AP Exam scores in the college decisions process? I read on multiple websites that it is mainly self reported so you can chose which scores you want to send, but I also asked several seniors if they were required to submit all their scores and they said yes. I am concerned because I took three AP classes my sophomore year (physics, chem, and world) but I did not score well on the exams (1,2, and 3s), however I recieved A’s in all of my classes. So if I applied to college through common app, will colleges look at all of my AP scores or just the ones I want to send?

For reference, I plan on applying to Columbia, UPenn, UVA (in state), and Penn State

2

In general, AP scores are self reported - I have never hear of any school that required students to submit all AP scores; the only official score request is generally to the school where you matriculate - for credit purposes. So, colleges cannot review what they do not see. However, some high schools, apparently, do include AP scores on transcripts - so you need to check to see if your school includes AP scores in any official communications with the colleges. One final note - colleges will know you took the AP course - so if you do not provide any scores they could inquire about test results and if you provide some, but not all test results, they may assume the ones you failed to provide were not good.

3

So this year, I am taking the bio, psych, calc, and lang exam, so If were to just submit these scores and omit my ap world, chem, and physics exam from my sophomore year, would this look bad?

4

It’s unusual to have As in class and such low AP scores, so I think you also need to consider factors such as whether there is grade inflation at your school, whether you need to improve your test taking skills, etc.

The two ivies and UVA will have scads of applicants reporting all their AP scores with 4s and 5s. This obviously won’t be the only part of your application they look at but it is likely to be a weak point.

I presume you are planning to apply to a range of matches and safeties as well as the schools you listed above? Obviously your standardized test scores, ECs, essays etc will all play into it, but the ivies are obviously reaches for everyone.

5

It is probably not that unusual, since many AP exams have fairly low score distributions, as shown at https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2019/Student-Score-Distributions-2019.pdf .

Indeed, one large school district posts an AP report at https://www.houstonisd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=73138&dataid=264353&FileName=AP%20Report%202019%20final.pdf . Figure 7B on page 18 shows what AP scores students with various course grades earned. For arts, history / social science, and science, the modal score for A students was 1, and for English, the tied modal scores were 1 and 2.

So it is not too surprising that there are high schools where the AP course content and grading standards fall far short of what the AP exams test. A reasonable expectation is that a well taught high school AP course should have A students earning 4 and 5 scores, but many high schools’ AP courses fall far short of that.

6

Wow. I would never have expected that it’s common to get As in class and 1s and 2s on the AP. My daughter’s school was quite opposite, students earning Bs in AP classes would get 4s and often 5s on the AP exams.

Anyway, I think the point stands that Ivy-level colleges will have many applicants who do report all AP scores and have them at 4s and 5s.