My son, a junior, is an IB student at a high school that also offers AP courses. Along with IB courses, he took AP Calc AB in his sophomore year with the exam score of 4. This year, he’s taking AP Calc BC and AP Biology along with other IB courses.
My question is: does he have to take these two AP exams if he’s not interested in receiving college credit transfer? Even more important, if he chooses not to take the exams, would this impact negatively when he applies to colleges in the fall? Would they ask for the exam scores?
What if he does take them, but does he have a choice not to submit them in case scores aren’t to his satisfaction?
Since he is a junior, I would suggest that he take the exams. I am an IB senior and I took a lot of AP classes in addition to my IB classes throughout high school. When your son applies for colleges next year, he will see that many of the applications make it optional to add the scores of the AP/IB exams he has taken so far. I think it will be to his advantage to be able to put the scores of those AP exams on his applications, especially since most people in IB only test in a couple subjects at the end of junior year. That being said, if he takes an exam and does not get a score that he wishes to reveal to colleges, he does not need to add that to the application. Like I said, most of the colleges that I applied to made that section optional, so I could choose which scores I wanted to report and which ones I thought would look bad on my application.
Now, if he was a senior, that would be a different situation. Many of the IB seniors at my school take AP classes senior year along with their IB classes, but pull out of the exam when they commit to a college and are able to determine if that college gives credit for that course or not. If your son takes AP courses next year, it is up to him (if his school lets him decide) to determine if studying for and taking the exams are worth it.
Hope that kind of helped…
@panther2016 - Yes, your response definitely helped! I much prefer that he takes the AP exams, but the only reason why I’m considering the option of having him skip these tests is because he’s quite overwhelmed with things that are coming up all around at the same time: final exams, 2 AP exams, 1 IB SL exam, SAT I and SATII tests, violin recital, a couple of youth symphony concerts, an audition for a spot in a professional philharmonic orchestra, not to mention of all his volunteer works. He’s really stressing out with all these piling on him at the same time period.
One option is to have him take the AP exams and see what scores he ends up with. As you said, if he doesn’t score well on these, he doesn’t have to divulge them in his application. However, what I’m still wondering is whether colleges look at such omissions as negative? I always had the impression that all AP and IB exams need to be reported in college applications?
I had one exam that I received a 3 in and I wasn’t comfortable enough with that score to report it, even though it was technically passing, so I didn’t. I’m not sure if that affected me at all… an admissions officer or someone with more experience could probably answer that better. However, I did get into most of the colleges I applied to, including my dream school. So, if it did affect my application, the impact wasn’t huge.
Also, which IB exam is he taking this year? The IB exam is much more important here since it goes towards his IB diploma, so if he thinks that studying for these two AP exams will impact how he does on the IB exam, that is another factor to consider.
Other than the two AP exams, he has one IB SL in Business Management.
How can your son take 2 AP as well as IB. My daughter is in Pre-IB and take AP Human Geography and will take AP statistics in 10th grade. She won’t have room in her schedule to take 2 AP classes in her Junior or Senior year because she have to TOK and her 6th Subject. I never understood how an IB student have room in their schedule to also take AP.
@sensation723 - I don’t know why taking 2 AP as well as IB is all that difficult? My son has 8 classes this semester:
- AP Calc BC, 2) AP Biology, 3) IB Chem HL, 4) IB History of the Americas HL, 5) IB Theory of Knowledge, 6) IB Business Management SL, 7) IB Spanish IV, 8) IB English A: Literature HL.
My daughter will have 8 as well. IB Math, IB Chemistry, IB English, IB History, IB French, TOK, IB Design tech. They only leave one class period open and she can’t change any of her IB classes for AP. You can only get accepted into the program in 9th grade at her school and you have to take pre-IB classes in 9th and 10th grade.
I just notice your AP math class is taking the place of IB math. My daughter school don’t allow that. Ok it make sense now.
@sensation723 - It’s a long story, and a very unpleasant one. My boys’ high school had a really lousy IB Math SL teacher. With so many parents complaining, they finally removed the teacher. Unfortunately for my two sons, the teacher’s removal came too late, so the only way they could get around this teacher was by taking AP Calc. My older son met the IB diploma requirement by taking the Math SL test (but not the course, of course, which was replaced with AP Calc). My younger one simply followed in his older brother’s footsteps. About half way into his Calc BC, he was informed that the school changed the rules and he can no longer just take the Math SL test to fulfill the IB diploma requirement; he’d now have to take the IB Math SL. So now he has no option but to take the IB Math SL in his senior year. One lousy teacher caused so much stress on so many families… And he’s not the only one!