Do graduate schools care which courses you placed out of during undergrad using AP scores? And can they see your scores?
Is it possible that placing out of too many introductory/ General Ed courses could have a negative impact on the way the student is viewed by graduate schools? I’ve heard that most top tier schools have stopped allowing students to place out of so many courses because they believe AP classes taken in high school fail to provide the proper foundations needed to succeed in higher level courses.
I took a ton of AP exams in high school, so my university is allowing me to skip over most of their general education courses. At first thought it sounds like a really good thing: I’ll be able to graduate early, save tons of money, and I’ll have more time to pursue classes related to my major of interest. But would taking the easy way out cause graduate schools to deem me “not ready”? Especially since I never made full scores on most of my AP exams?
Some might.
Whether or not they can see your scores depends on whether your college transcript displays them or not. Most colleges don’t put the AP score on the transcript, and graduate admissions committees are really not going to care what score you got on the AP exam 4-5 years ago.
But yes, some graduate programs might care that you placed out of foundational coursework with AP classes. One way to mitigate that is to do very well in your intermediate and advanced-level courses in that area. If you have a 3.8 in your major, very few schools are going to argue that you didn’t get a good foundation in the field early on. If you have a 3.3 and a lot of AP credit in your major, that might change things.
Also, most graduate programs are not going to care if you place out of general ed classes. They care about classes relevant to them. For example, a math PhD program might care if you placed out of calculus I and II using AP classes if you got mediocre grades in intermediate level math classes; they probably aren’t going to care that you placed out of English composition.