<p>My school doesn't offer as many APs as I'd like.
Do colleges investigate about the courses offered, or is it fair game for everyone?
If so, which APs would you recommend to a sophomore for self study?</p>
<p>Yes. Your guidance counselor fills out a form saying how rigorous your schedule is. It gives everyone a more equal opportunity.</p>
<p>Thanks.
I have a follow up question.
Do high caliber schools (Ivy, Stanford, etc.) care about how many APs you take?
I still think I should take AP Comp Sci myself, should I?</p>
<p>I really know nothing about the Ivies, sorry.</p>
<p>No worries.
I hope somebody reading this can answer :)</p>
<p>Yes they do. If you take 2 APs and your school only offers those two, that can be better than taking 4 APs over the course of HS when your school makes it possible to take 10.</p>
<p>They care that you chose the more rigorous courses in your high school. AP would be considered more rigorous than the regular course (e.g. AP English versus regular English).</p>
<p>UC and CSU formalize it by weighting admissions GPA with +1 for honors and AP courses with C or higher grades in 10th and 11th grade, up to a maximum of 8 semesters’ worth.</p>
<p>Schools with holistic processes are likely to check your courses versus what is offered at your high school. If your high school offered 3 AP courses and you took all 3, that would likely look better than someone at a high school that offered 10 AP courses but took only 3, especially if s/he chose Human Geography, Statistics, and Environmental Science while avoiding English Literature and Calculus BC.</p>
<p>Yes.
Although GPA and the Application Essay weigh heavily, schools want to see that you challenged yourself throughout your high school career with what your school had to offer. If they offer APs, Honors, and Higher-level courses, they want to see that you took the initiative to attempt these courses of greater difficulty.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. </p>
<p>So for the follow up question- would it be beneficial for me to self-study/take an online course on an easy AP like Comp Sci?</p>
<p>Admissions officers probably know which APs are “easy to self-study”. And those same APs are less likely to give useful subject credit after you enter a university.</p>
<p>One question… My school offers 17 AP classes, but if you only take 4 when you leave high school is that bad for high tier colleges?</p>
<p>I have my doubts about the responses to this post.</p>
<p>The top colleges get thousands of applications, and have admission rates of just 10%. I doubt they will go to that much trouble individually analyzing the nuances of each application, and then compare that nuance to other applications.</p>
<p>“Well Charlie took 5 AP courses, but his school offered 10, but Sue took 4 AP classes, but that is all they offered”</p>
<p>Life is not always fair. I doubt a college will go to great lengths to ensure that every nuance of your application is considered so that you will be treated 100% equally and fairly.</p>
<p>I think that if one kid took 14 AP courses, and another only 3, that a school can’t help but like the one who took 14 better, even if the kid who took 3 took all 3 that were available to her.</p>
<p>This isn’t really true. While they don’t compare one app to another, they do know, because of the GC rec, what kind of school they go to. If a kid takes 2 APs and 20 are offered, his schedule will not be marked as “most rigorous” by the GC. However, if the kid goes to a school that doesn’t offer APs but offers other types of advanced classes (some top schools have gotten rid of AP), and he takes all of them that he can, his schedule will be “most rigorous.”</p>
<p>However, if one person takes 14 APs out of 14 offered, and another takes 3 out of 3 offered, all else being equal they would probably choose the first since they go to a harder school and still managed to attain success.</p>