So let’s say I want to major in CS. There are x classes/credits I HAVE to take in order to major in CS, and there are y credits that I (like all other students regardless of major) have to earn to graduate. Does y far outweigh x? I’m thinking about taking many of the simpler AP exams in my senior year to amass a lot of credits, so will all of these credits be efficiently transferred into the gen education requirement at a UC? I plan on taking most prereq classes because those are the ones that set me up for the hard late-college classes.THANKS.
My older son is a 2nd year student at UCD. He took the following AP classes in HS:
AP US History/AP World History/AP Environmental/AP Calculus/AP Bio/AP Physics. None of these classes could be used to fulfill the GE requirements at UCD except US History. He got credits for the rest of the classes which moved up his registration priority, but nothing else. You need to pick your AP classes wisely to maximize the credits. For many schools you need 5’s to get full credit. Here is a link to explain the credits. I would check each UC to see their policy.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/exam-credit/ap-credits/davis/index.html
CSU’s are far more generous with AP Credits. My younger son has gotten credit for 5 classes (Calc 1/2/Econ/US History/Bio) at SDSU and he only needed a 3 or higher on the AP exams.
To add onto the previous post, at UCD you can also use AP credits to fulfill major requirements and prereqs. Again though, you can’t apply them towards GEs.
If you’re doing CS, you could use a high score (I think you need at least a 4) on the calculus exams to place into a higher calculus class and save some time. AB would exempt you from MAT 21A and BC could exempt you from MAT 21A and MAT 21B. APCS would exempt you from ECS 30 if you get a 4 or a 5. AP chem would exempt you from first quarter chemistry if you score high enough. Other than that I can’t think of any that could potentially directly apply to a CS major. I mean, you could do physics…but you’d need the Physics 9 series and AP units don’t exempt you from that as far as I know.
In some of the colleges (I know Letters and Science allows this, not sure about others), you can use AP English to waive the lower division composition requirement. That’s what I ended up doing.
For the most part though, the main use of AP credits is getting units to improve your pass time. As an example, I’m currently a second quarter junior but have senior level registration priority due to AP units.
As for the other UCs, look into them and see how much AP units could actually apply for.