Yes, high schools that are not well known as elite cannot easily drop externally validated advanced courses (AP, IB, etc.) as easily as already-preferentially-treated elite high schools like those dropping AP courses.
Indeed, the external validation and standardization is generally considered a strong advantage for AP courses on these forums, even in comparison to similar-content college courses taken while in high school, when it comes to how colleges see them in admission evaluation.
@exlibris97 Do you have a source for your statement that Adcoms don’t consider the actual exam score when evaluating an applicant?
@shuttlebus - we know for a fact that they can’t consider senior AP scores, they aren’t taken before acceptance/rejection. Many students take earlier AP courses and self-report the scores, but there is no mechanism for officially reporting those unless the student is accepted.
However, self-reported scores can be verified at matriculation (similar to how some colleges trust-but-verify self-reported courses and grades), so they can be considered for admission purposes even without official reports.
^ you ever hear about kids getting acceptances rescinded for misreporting AP scores, @ucbalumnus ?
I don’t know why colleges would request for students to self-report AP exams scores if the Adcoms didn’t use that information. I also don’t know why some of these private high schools that have eliminated AP classes still have their students sit for the AP exams if exam scores weren’t a factor in admissions. I skimmed through some of the legal documents in the current thread regarding the Harvard lawsuit. Based on the info I read, Harvard does track the student scores on AP exams.
I am not saying that I know for a fact that Adcoms factor in AP exams scores. I have not seen definitive proof and was wondering if those who say AP exams scores don’t matter had based that comment on an official statement from any admissions office.
Colleges don’t need AP exam scores to evaluate students. Besides, AP exam scores do not factor into college “ratings”; therefore, it is a low-priority criterion – if it is a criterion at all – in admissions.
it is definitely a criteria for admission at some colleges. At least up to about 6 APs. I don’t think they care after that.
Whether it matters in the long run will probably depend on the comparative success of the students. If these schools truly adopt an AP+ curriculum, then the students will probably take the AP anyway and still get a 4 or a 5. I don’t believe that most schools will though, and that could be a problem. Most parents aren’t paying $50k per year for their kid to begin college behind public school kids.
Personally, I can’t think of many high schools that charge 50K a year that are not offering a curriculum without AP or IB that is not at least on par with the academics at your typical local public school. More to the point, AOs are familiar with the academics at these high schools.
IME, the students taking the AP exams are not doing it for admissions, and are not being advised by their GCs to do it for admissions. They are most often doing it for potential college credit/ class placement.
I believe colleges care a lot about taking AP courses (or rigor, however that is at the school in question), much less about the tests, though if scores are sent I don’t see why they wouldn’t consider them.
I realize there are some HS where kids start APs in 9th grade, at ours only one is allowed before junior year (Euro) and most are taken senior year - so the scores are irrelevant. YMMV of course.
UK is a huge exception. I know kids who had conditional admits to UK universities and had to wait for senior year AP scores to come out over the summer before they knew for sure they were going.
Taking APs. Not the exam scores.
These schools are not “having their students sit for the AP exams” or counseling them to do so. They are out of that business. If a student wants to take an AP exam for potential credit or placement, that is a good reason and entirely up to the student. Their non-AP school curriculum has prepared them to do well on the exams without taking the AP exam-specific courses.
@brantly “Taking APs. Not the exam scores.”
I am not sure. I think that National AP scholars are appealing to some schools. I think a student with AP 5’s and 4’s has to have an edge over a student with 2’s and 3’s.
It is true that it is too memorization and algorithm focused, but that is currently how colleges work. For example, the math and science death march that ABET engineers go through for the first two year really drains the fun and curiosity out of kids in exchange for maximizing memorized more facts and math skills. I don’t think it will be effective to change the process at the high school level unless it changes at the college level too, because that would just disadvantage the students.
Personally, I put it on the prestige list with the good citizenship medal. 
Keep in mind that 40% of AP exams are taken by seniors,
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2017/Program-Summary-Report-2017.pdf
so many students will not have earned any AP awards by the time of application, although they may eventually earn them.
I think that it goes without saying that 5’s are preferable to a wall of 2’s and 3’s. But then is 5 5’s and a 3 better than 4 5’s and 2 4’s? One can go through all the permutations and still be none the wiser, and AO’s are certainly not going to illuminate things for us.
Not sure why a student would consider math and science for engineering majors (i.e. mostly physics, plus some chemistry, or more chemistry for chemical engineering) to be a “death march”, since they are more about problem solving rather than memorization, and engineering majors are more likely to have liked math and science in high school.
However, it is true that the end goal of engineering education is to prepare students for engineering design and related work, and some students may prefer a curriculum organized to introduce engineering design earlier, rather than the more traditional arrangement of natural science then engineering science then engineering design that is mainly based on prerequisite sequencing.
As others have said, it’s the easiest way to get credit and/or advanced placement. My younger son was not interested in sophomore standing, but getting credit for his GE requirements meant that he had enough flexibility in his schedule to take a whole year abroad instead of just a semester.
I’ve heard admissions officers multiple times say that they care much more about taking APs (or a challenging curriculum) than the actual exam scores received. The Common Application asks students to self-report AP scores, but that doesn’t mean that every college cares about that line in the application.
@mathmom What about schools that practice holistic admissions? In the thread discussing the lawsuit brought against Harvard, the released documents indicate that the score on AP exams is one of the categories used to determine the student’s academic rating.
Not all AP classes are created equal, obviously. I would think the AP exam score would be a useful data point in determining the actual rigor of a particular AP Class when evaluating a student from an unknown high school.
All other test scores being equal, I would think a student applying to Caltech with a 5 on the BC exam would have better odds of admission than a student who scored a 2 even if both students received an A in their high school class.
But, like I said upthread, I have never seen an official statement from any college about this policy and was wondering if anyone could link one.
At California public universities, AP scores can fulfill or partially fulfill subject requirements for frosh admission:
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/requirements/a-g-requirements/index.html
https://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/admissionhandbook.pdf
Presumably, this is not particularly important for students at elite out-of-state private high schools; such students would probably fulfill the requirements anyway (although some out-of-state students do not notice the art requirement until it is too late) and are probably uninterested in public schools anyway.