Purdue is similar. They’ll take generic credits but it’s much stricter what can be used for STEM courses required for FYE and one’s major.
This varies a lot by college, and typically the student does not know the college ahead of time. But as I stated above, it makes sense for aspiring engineering students to take Calc and Physics AP courses even w/o assured credit.
Assuming that my kid doesn’t veer off of course, he should graduate in 3 years as a double major in CS and DS. Possibly could graduate in 2.5 years as a single major. That’s a nice $35K savings by not going that one year.
Many public’s will take most APs as graduation credit with 3’s. Often though, depending on major and school, the AP credits can and will be useless.
My D didn’t have any AP credits, but she wishes she’d had credits for English or history and then wouldn’t have had to take those in college. She could have taken more engineering electives or even other classes she liked, but her school required 2 English classes (with writing) and at least one history or civics class. She needed 15 general credits, including those 3 classes, for the ABET program. She would have LOVED to have had one fewer class each spring.
She had friends with AP chemistry and math credits and they were placed in a higher level course, but that didn’t work out so well for many of them. D just plugged along in Calc I and Chem I and that was just fine with her.
My S19 will not have had any English or history APs as his focus was math and science where he’ll have just three: Physics, calculus, and stats (third is pretty worthless for civil eng in hindsight he should have stuck with the conflicting orchestra!). But, I work at a community college where he’s taken a bunch of courses including English 101, A US history, and several engineering courses. We know he’ll likely repeat the engineering ones but they were free and fun to take.
AP credit helped my DD go into school as a sophomore+ in standing so registering for the classes that she needed in her sequence has been much easier. Others are on waitlist or needing to wait to take classes that she had no trouble getting into. Some are paying to take a summer course at a CC to keep up with the sequence of classes and their peers. If they don’t they are looking at an extra semester at the back end. Those credits certainly helped in that area do she has not been closed out of any classes.
She was able to apply the AP to entry level English courses that typically take a ton of time, freeing up the time and the spots in her freshman schedule for an upper level courses.
She could graduate early by a year or a semester but she is doing two majors and a minor and taking a few random courses that interest her. This was not the case at all the schools on her final list and it was part of the decision making process when choosing her school.
Possible “hit and run” OP. AP and DE courses are extremely “valuable”, in the senses both of educational AND economic benefit. Students should take as many of both as possible, without being overwhelmed and having their HS and/or college GPA suffer. Pre-med students almost always retake the AP classes in college to get the ‘A’, so neither kind of benefit there, just the higher college GPA.
AP Credits may help you be able to:
- Do a Co-op//internship
- Study abroad
- Do a 3-2 Master’s program
- Do research
- Take lab courses
- Double Major
- Graduate early if you have enough credits to save a semester
- stay on track if you have to Withdraw from classes because of health or academic reasons
Again, it depends upon the school, and the departments in the schools. My one son entered with second semester sophomore standing. All 5s were recognized. I think 4s too though there were restrictions that did not pertain to him. 3s went towards general education credits. He got a concentration in mathematics because he walked in with calc and didn’t have to take many quantitative coded courses to get that. But that was his school. Another one of my kids also got all of his AP credits applied as he wanted them.
It all depends upon the school and the program. Anyone who wants to get full AP credit towards early graduation and/or plunging into advanced courses right away should check how each school AND the relevant department treats AP courses.
I want to add that sometimes it is not wise to skip the college version of the AP subject. At my school, Physics1 was a 5 credit beast of a course, subtitled Mechanics. It was specifically for math, math science, physics, chem and engineering majors. Skipping it was not a good idea unless the student was a true physics buff who knew the stuff solidly.
One was allowed to take the course concurrently with Calculus. Those who did so and did not have a very strong working knowledge of College Calc suffered. Many dropped the course. My AP calc simply put me into a more souped up, theory based version of Calc 1 and I have no idea if I even got General ED credit for that AP.
However a 5 in foreign language allowed me to take advanced courses in the subject and gave me full credit for two years of that language. One needed to have completed two years of College level foreign language as part of the graduation requirements. I don’t know how many credits I got for the AP test but my foreign language requirement was taken care of and had I decided to major in that subject, i would have started with a 300 level course.
A 5 in AP English got you out of the Freshman Comp course that everyone else had to take. Not sure that was such a smart idea to skip as that was the base for all future Humanities courses. You learned the schools’ basic rules in that course and I did pay having to learn as I went along in a more advanced level course.
Premeds could not AP out of any of the intro bio courses, I remember. But there was no general biology course offered. You went into Cell Bio as your first course in that dept.
This is back in the Dark Ages but I’ve gotten feedback that the reqs are still very similar there.
My kids got very generous credit for most of their AP courses and of community college and other college courses they took outside of their matriculating colleges. I was surprised at some of the generosity. That is not always the case
@cptofthehouse, there’s an easy way to decide if a student is ready to skip a class…get the old tests from the class they’re considering skipping. Physics in my son’s program was the same as yours, the physics for physics majors, not watered down for engineers (ditto math). He skipped Physics I and Calc I and II and did very well in the subsequent classes.
At my daughter’s school AP didn’t save money. Her high scores in a variety of classes did waive a number of humanities and arts classes, and she was prepared well enough after Calc BC to pass the placement exam at Calc 4. Her school required 16 quarters to graduate so there was no way to make her program shorter to save money. She did get to take more advanced courses and completed three minors.
In electrical engineering you can shorten the prerequisite chain by 3 semesters if you cut out Calculus I/II and skip Mechanics and E/M. They make you take these before circuits which is basically before the rest of everything.
And GEs that engineering doesn’t cover is roughly a year’s worth of courses that often get done during prerequisite time but a generous college will knock off most of those GEs with APs. Got out a year early and entered the workforce.
@tangentline That is awesome. D (rising hs jr) is wanting to do BS/MS in EE. in 5 years. She is under the impression a MS is needed. Your opinion would be valued. And she will come in with Calc I/II and M/EM, Chem and a mess of Gen ed.
@BingeWatcher It depends on which type of EE — I come from a Power Systems background. This is a generalization: Integrated Circuits will have more Masters than say the Computer Sciency EE route where people really just become a software engineer. The warning for three years in undergrad is that it is much harder to land an internship as you only have two summers and by the first one you might not have enough coursework that companies want but I know some that have landed internships as a rising 2nd year. With graduate school you have more time to look for internships or even full time jobs. I had no internship experience and worked as an “electrical engineer” for state government (got hired 4 months after graduating) and wasn’t really using my degree the way I wanted to so did concurrent grad school for a year and landed a Spring and Summer internship at different companies where I actually get to work with power systems. A Masters helps — California ISO prefers Masters/PhDs over Bachelors. People with Bachelors can perform just as well as those with Masters with experience but often the strongest of my coworkers have their Masters or PhD. As for PhDs, some fresh out of college, have way more applied knowledge than those that don’t… I definitely use what I studied in grad school. Another small perk of a grad degree is shaving off a year of experience required to obtain a PE license or starting at a salary a tier above entry level.