<p>According to this</a> page, MIT gives elective units only for 5 out of my 6 AP tests this year.</p>
<p>How difficult is it to accumulate elective units throughout the course of four years? Would it be a good idea to take all six exams anyway, or would it be better to take a few, or is it an unnecessary measure altogether?</p>
<p>Personally, I'd take the units.</p>
<p>They're very useful if you're thinking of double-majoring -- it's somewhat difficult to accumulate 270 units outside the GIRs if you don't have any AP credit coming in. </p>
<p>They can also be useful even if you're only single-majoring, because if you want to drop a class, you won't have to double up in a subsequent semester just to make up the units. My fiance, for example, will be graduating with exactly the number of units he needs, because he dropped classes in a few terms and ended up taking fewer units than he expected.</p>
<p>Also helpful if you're interested at all in getting sophomore standing for the second semester. You need to have a certain number of credits complete in order to do so and an easy way to get those credits is to have them carry over from high school. Sophomore standing is a good option if you want to take more than four classes second semester (although you miss out on the last semester of no record grading).</p>
<p>Take it, for both the above reasons.</p>