<p>I'm currently in Japanese 302 during my senior year of high school, and I'm trying to decide on taking the AP Japanese exam. I am aware that many universities (as well as my likely choice Purdue) offer foreign language placement exams prior to the first semester. My question is whether there is any advantage in taking the AP exam over taking the placement exam. I was thinking that the placement exams only offer placement and not actual college credits for the courses placed out of, but I can't get any clear indication of whether this is true. On the other hand, I know for certain that AP exams give both credits and placement.</p>
<p>At DD’s school, her 4 on the AP German exam gave her three credits. She placed into the fourth semester of German (as high as her university would allow) with the university’s placement test. Another option that you might explore is CLEP exams. You may be able to get more CLEP credit than AP credit.</p>
<p>If you are going to continue with Japanese, you will probably want to look carefully at your university program to see how high of a level you want to jump in to in the language.</p>
<p>You should be able to look at the university website under AP credit and figure out which classes you would receive credit for with a given score. However; you may not need credit for some of the lower level courses if you plan to major/minor in the language as those early classes may not count toward the requirements. So, unless you need elective credit (can’t imagine why) you probably don’t need the AP test. The only real benefit, as I see it, is that your class has been geared to the AP test and that would give another measure of your ability to contrast and compare with your placement score and perhaps improve the chance of accurate placement.</p>
<p>I’m hoping to use it for foreign language credit. I don’t want to major in Japanese, but there are foreign language requirements that I want to fulfill. I was concerned that maybe the college-offered placement exam would, for instance, place me into Japanese 301, but would not give me credits for 101 through 202. Meaning that I would essentially be starting at a higher course level, but still have to meet the same requirements by going through about two more years in the language. Is this (generally) the case?</p>
<p>It is impossible to tell you requirements for specific colleges. However, most colleges are looking for proficiency for their foreign language requirements. So there is a possibility that a placement test could meet the requirements if you are proficient enough. Because Japanese is so difficult, it may be harder to place out of that language unless you have an exceptional high school program.</p>
<p>Besides fulfilling my requirements, would the college-offered test translate to actual credits? Or would I have to make them up elsewhere? I know that you need x amount of credits to get your degree. Would the college placement test take anything off of that “x” amount?</p>
<p>In summary, is there anything an AP exam can do that the college placement exam can’t do?</p>