Both my DS and DD will have well in excess of 45 AP credits entering into college. (Our State University System limits them to 45 credits). This obviously is a good thing for their time in college but I’m wondering how this potential advantage has transferred to people in real life (ie not hypothetically but actual results).
Did it allow your student to :
A) Carry a lighter credit load per semester?
B) Graduate Early?
C) Double major?
D) Take more interesting classes in their major?
E) Other (please elaborate)
Interested in how these AP credits have changed the college experience for those that have already done it.
My daughter is only a freshman but so far her credits have benefited her in course scheduling and housing selection. She’s technically a junior in terms of credits. Between that and honors college priority, she has gotten her exact schedule (in terms of timing and classes) both semesters.
My daughter has no gen ed electives left so she’s already been able to take the courses that interest her the most. She’ll also have more room available for tech electives going forward
I don’t think she’s planning on lightening the load but is on track to do a 3 semester co-op and still graduate “on time” with her class so it will save her 1 semester.
Take more lab courses (less credits each semester but more semesters)
Double Major
and take the 4 years.
Or Graduate early.
My daughter graduated in 2.5 years (HS Credits + some summer courses) but then finished her masters in 1.5 years…since we would pay for 4 years of college, she got a second degree within that time. We also told her not to rush but were not going to prevent her.
If you graduate early, you will be younger than others at work/grad school…my daughter wasn’t even 21 when she started grad school. Now she is a teacher at just barely 22.
For one of our students, the AP + CLEP credits accepted by her university, in addition to a couple easy online classes over the first winter intersession, got her to sophomore standing her freshman year.
This allowed her to apply for a major with a two year program/track a full year earlier.
She does have the option to graduate in three years. However, she is going to add a major (or minor?) in a foreign language and stay the fourth year. She is going to have an “easy” semester abroad then return to campus for another relatively relaxing semester. She will work, crank out some grad school applications and plot her next steps.
It really seems to have worked out well for her. She is looking forward to a low key senior year since she plans to go directly to grad school.
My oldest was able to double major (Commerce and Statistics) with a minor in Marketing. My daughter is a freshman and will also be able to double major…Finance and she is figuring out her second major and she will also do a semester abroad. She also got credit for many core classes, has upperclass status so she registers early. They both went in with around 40 AP credits.
@FlaParent keep in mind that some schools limit how many AP credits they accept…and a some very selective schools don’t accept them. Your student should look at how a school that they are applying to treat AP classes. Alo what score is needed for credit. Some schools accept a 3 and some schools want 4’s or 5’s to give credit.
it really depends on the college. My kids went to Swarthmore and Yale, each had tons of AP classes/scores of 5. Only benefit was that the one at Swarthmore was able to take one fewer class his last semester. But they didn’t take the AP classes expecting any different.
D1went into college (engineering) with I think 55 AP and dual enrollment credits. She graduated in four years and a summer with her bachelors and masters (co-terminal program).
D2 went into college (LAC) with also a large number of AP and DE credit (I think a little less than her sister), studied abroad twice (a semester and a summer) and is graduating in three years with almost a double major—she’ll have a BA in Econ with a very strong math minor.
Both kids benefitted from advanced standing, and the earlier registration for courses and housing that came with it.
The advantage of AP credit really does vary by college though.
Higher class standing is not always advantageous. Some colleges charge more for higher class standing (for example: https://admissions.umich.edu/costs-aid/costs ), and some colleges give registration priority to frosh/soph students for some introductory level courses.
Probably the main benefit in many cases is to be able to take advanced placement (what “AP” means) so that the student can take more advanced courses or free electives instead of repeating what s/he learned in high school. This can facilitate coterminal master’s degrees, study abroad, a second major, or just additional interesting free electives, as some have described above.
If taking a more advanced course based on an AP score, it would be advisable to try the college’s old final exams of the course to be skipped, in order to check how well the student knows that content by the college’s standards. For example, if the student has a 5 in AP calculus AB that the college allows skipping calculus 1 with, trying the college’s old calculus 1 final exams would be advisable if the student will enroll in calculus 2.
For UC-Berkeley L&S it helps, but not as much as one would think. Out of the 41 semester credits that my kid got, only 16 are more or less useable for subject credit, though all can be used towards graduation. GE/breadth classes requirements can’t be fulfilled by AP credits. It also can’t be used to fulfill the Lower Division Domain Emphasis class for Data Science majors. Other majors vary from department to department as far as requirements. Many of the credits are void credits. For example my kid gets credit for Econ 1 by UC rules, but since the UCB Econ department requires a 4+ in order to skip the actual class, if he ever decides to take the class it would void out the AP credits.
For the Engineering school, a couple of the AP classes can go towards GE requirements.
The benefits: A 5 on AP Calc BC allowed my kid to skip the first 2 Calculus classes and go directly to Calc 3. A 5 on AP Eng Lit allowed him to skip the 2 mandatory Reading and Composition classes. And combined with his dual enrollment credits, it allowed him to have senior status, which helps tremendously for registration timing purposes. And it may help him graduate a bit earlier.
AP credit was a huge advantage for both of my children.
Both DD and DS double majored. (finance/accounting; finance/supply chain)
Both studied abroad for a semester.
Both graduated on time without carrying a heavy course load. This allowed them to direct their energy toward quality skill-building activities…and in my opinion, contributed to their high GPAs.
Yes, having higher credit hours allowed them to register early for classes.
DS has enough hours in his 8th semester to take CPA exams…no 5th year for him.
For my family, AP credits were a blessing. As others have mentioned some schools cap AP credits and some charge higher tuition based on credit hours. Also some schools disallow credit for some courses depending upon one’s major. Luckily for my children, these issues didn’t affect them at their university.
We were fortunate that our high school had excellent AP teachers. They taught the material well. In the cases where my kids had to take the next level of a subject they were well prepared.
My daughter was able to apply enough AP credits to graduate in 7 academic semesters (with a light load the last semester). She ended up with a double major and minor and even used some AP credits towards her minor. She got credit for freshman English (not that she would have minded taking it).
However, UCB allows departments to give priority to lower class standing or level, which is sometimes done for lower level courses that frosh/soph students need as major prerequisites.
Kid 1 went in with 29 credits; Kid 2 went in with 44 credits in AP/DE
A) Carry a lighter credit load per semester? Kid 1: Never Kid 2: One semester
B) Graduate Early? No
C) Double major? Kid 1: No Kid 2: Yes? (maybe, probably would have been possible w/o the credit, but don’t know if the minor still would have fit)
D) Take more interesting classes in their major? No. Kid 1 did have time for voice lessons, and some vocal performance classes that she wouldn’t have had space for as a nursing major, so interesting classes, but not in the major.
E) Other (please elaborate): Being able to start ahead of the crowd in math, one of Kid 2’s majors, allowed her to get into real math (proof-based classes) earlier, which lead her to a realization that while she liked applied math, real mathematics probably wasn’t her thing. But, she was only a few classes away from finishing the major, so she did. I really feel like she’d have been happier pursing her minor as her second major but the AP/DE credits pushed in one direction. Cookie-cutter AP classes aren’t anywhere close to the experience one has with real college courses, and as such, aren’t helpful. If you use them for general education, there’s still the same issue. Sure, get history “out of the way,” but a college level history class can/should be so different from the experience of a hs class, even AP, that students really shouldn’t decide on the basis of the hs experience if they love or hate something.
However, if you really want to experience an actual college history course, wouldn’t it be better to take one covering new-to-you interesting topics in history, rather than the same material that you covered in your high school AP history course? Yes, there could be some content differences in a college survey of US history course and AP US history, but there would still be substantial overlap that would not be present in some other history course. Or you could choose to take a more in-depth course focusing on a particular part of US history.
Kid one has a sufficiently high AP score to waive two quarters of required literature…and had to take only one term of writing. That was for an AP lit score of 5.
Kid 1 also got 4 or 5 on two other AP tests…and they didn’t benefit him at all.
Kid 2 has scores of 5 on two AP tests. Neither really helped her in terms of college at all.
Niece was able to skip a bunch of entry-level classes and gen eds, study abroad for a full year, and graduate in 4 years with a double major that at her university was in two different undergraduate colleges with distinct gen ed requirements. Technically, she has two bachelor’s degrees.
My daughter started with 62 credits from dual enrollment starting as a junior although some are really just free electives that aren’t needed
A) Carry a lighter credit load per semester? perhaps she shows no interest in doing that
B) Graduate Early? most likely 3 years, she could have done 2 if she strictly did 1 major no extras - it will depend on what she ends up doing for internships/study abroad/double major/grad courses taken in undergrad etc. Basically we are taking it one semester at a time - in addition she is loving the extra curricular part such as club figure skating
C) Double major? Accounting and possibly Finance (taking first class in finance to test it out otherwise it will be marketing) she will have enough credits to sit for the cpa at graduation but either way the plan is to get a master’s degree
D) Take more interesting classes in their major? I’m not sure if she will take more than the required accounting classes though she will take other business classes that interest her, She is now certified in Bloomberg terminal which I guess is something used in accounting/finance
E) Other (please elaborate) general ed classes don’t necessarily correspond with AP/dual enrollment - for instance my daughter needed to take social justice with 20 hour field work and something like an interactive visual/performing art class - neither of which have AP alternatives
Still needed to do typical freshman things like a dialogue class regardless of how many credits since she just graduated high school vs being a regular transfer
Honors programs - if you already have credit for a specific class you may have to fulfill alternative honors courses to graduate with honors but that would be school specific
My daughter got to register for classes with juniors and early registration for honors so she registered an hour before it opened for juniors for 2nd semester
Housing is different at her school so she is considered a first year student for this purpose - they go by current number of years vs credits
DS18 did 13 APs in HS and was a National AP Scholar. He also did 3 DE classes and one CLEP exam. He started with over 60 hours of college credit. About 40 hours will be used to meet degree requirements while the rest will be free electives.
He was selected for a full ride mentored scholarship that has a lot of benefits, including funded study abroad and/or research experiences all three summers. He also was selected for a pre-med program that gives him guaranteed admission to med school as long as completes the program and meets certain GPA and MCAT thresholds. I think the rigor of his HS coursework was at least part of what helped him secure both.
Both of these programs discourage him from graduating early, although I think he could graduate in three years if he insisted on doing so. Right now he is planning to finish in four years, and to use the credits to complete at least two majors. Potentially also either a third major, a minor, or some graduate school coursework. When the time comes to apply to graduate programs, he wants to be competitive for programs that may be highly selective.
I’ve read the conventional advice folks give as far as how many APs to take if you want to be competitive for an elite school or whatever. And also discussion on kids burning themselves out by taking too many and that it is just madness, etc. Honestly, my kid would have went crazy in HS if they had restricted him from taking all of the college level classes. He would have been bored out of his mind. He rarely almost never had more than an hour of homework to do. He did sports, ECs and had plenty of time to just be a kid and hang with his friends. I’m not saying every kid should, but for him and in the context of his HS I am really glad he had the opportunity. He truly made the most of his HS experience.