<p>And you see that a kid got several B+s in AP classes but got 5s on the corresponding AP tests and 800s on the corrosponding SAT IIs, would your initial thought be that the kid is lazy or that the teacher/class is hard?</p>
<p>Because I'm in this exact situation right now, and I'm really afraid that it'll make me look like a "smart but lazy" student. 60-75% of people get 5s in most of the AP classes in my school BTW.</p>
<p>It depends on what else you have going for you, what we are looking for, and what the rest of people look like.</p>
<p>No offense, but if I was an admissions officer at a top (Ivy) school, a B+ in a class but a 5 on the AP would make me mark you as a “smart, but lazy” type.</p>
<p>It also depends on the grades of other students in your class. If many people who also scored 5’s got A’s in the class, you are the “smart, but lazy” type. If not, you might be able to ask your guidance counselor to explain the difficulty of your classes.</p>
<p>@littlepenguin: A couple people got As, but they’re the genius kids. The vast majority of people got Bs and Cs. And also, how would colleges know what other kids got in the class?</p>
<p>One grade received in one class is not enough to qualify someone as either smart or lazy. Now if your entire transcript contains similar trends, then that would be a probable assumption. Generally though, unless your recommendations somehow suggest that you are somewhat of a “smart but lazy” type, I wouldn’t worry about it.</p>
<p>Your secondary school report should contain information about the grades students have generally received in certain courses. It will not, of course, provide a grade breakdown for your particular class of students.</p>
<p>^My school profile only has AP scores for each subject. Unfortunately it doesn’t have info on what kids usually get in certain courses. </p>
<p>And the problem is, my school of choice right now is Berkeley, and they don’t accept recs. All the admissions officers will see are my grades and test scores, with nothing to indicate whether I’m lazy or not except for the school profile.</p>
<p>iLiveOnCC - Colleges wouldn’t know. But if other kids got A’s in the class, your guidance counselor wouldn’t be able to say the class was too hard.</p>
<p>Then again, I do agree with irishrabbit. If this happened across several classes, it would be a problem. If it happened in only one, don’t worry :)</p>
<p>Well I took 4 APs and got 3 Bs and 1 A. For one of them, no one in the class got an A. For the second one, I was actually one of the few kids to get an A. For the third, only 2-3 people got As. IDK what people got in the fourth one. How will I be able to explain how hard the first and third classes were or is there nothing I can do? And I’m not aiming for HYPSM or anything like that, so I’m guessing that my problem won’t be as bad for less selective top schools.</p>
<p>They say most admission officers do a “holistic” review. So if I am looking at someone with As in their AP class but a 2 or a 3 in the AP exam, it won’t impress me. On the other hand, if you have B in your AP class (and you took a whole cart load of APs) and scored 5s in all of them with super SAT2 score, I would definitely take you seriously. Again it depends what colleges are you applying for. If the top 10, you will be competing with kids with solid As and solid 5s and solid SAT scores. </p>
<p>Again the other part is your EC. If you have strong ECs, that will help. I think at this point, don’t overstress the Bs, you are pretty competitive and your weighted GPA should still be good due to APs.</p>
<p>I would guess that, if Berkeley doesn’t ask for recommendations, they are similarly not going to sit there and try to make real-world inferences based off of sketchy numerical data (other than the obvious ones, of course).</p>
<p>Your AP courses do count as honors courses for calculating UC admissions GPA (+1, up to a maximum of 8 semesters’ worth).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t care unless that was a constant pattern, but I think a B+ is a good grade, so I would admit you, provided you had good ECs and wrote a great essay.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. At some schools, like yours and mine, apparently, AP classes do not have grade inflation and the classes are usually harder than the tests. If most people get B’s and 5’s, this would just mean that you go to a hard school, not that you’re lazy, just like an A in an AP class but a 3 on the test means that you go to an easy school (or, perhaps, you were sick on the exam day).</p>
<p>I’d look at class rank to get a gauge as to how stringent is the overall grading at your school. Given your AP course grades vs. exam grades, I’d have a concern if you weren’t in the top 10% of your graduating class.</p>
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<p>So, what do you think, were the classes too hard for you? Scoring a 5 on an AP or an 800 on a SAT II won’t help that much.</p>