S19 has AP scores that need to be sent to his school. He has a couple from last year that he wants sent & he said that he already “filled in the bubble” for the free reporting from this year’s tests. Where I’m confused is which test scores will be sent. He thinks it’s just the tests his took this year, but the message on College Board is somewhat ambiguous. It says :
If you “bubbled” a college code on your AP answer sheet this year, your scores will be sent to that college free of charge. If you would like to send score reports to additional colleges, universities, or scholarship programs, you can do so for a fee.
That makes it sounds like all of his scores will be sent.
All, but they won’t be sent until they release the scores from this years tests some time early July. This posed a problem for my S19 as he may be doing his orientation/scheduling late June. He went ahead ordered a score report to be sent now so most of his scores will be available for scheduling in June. He only has 2 scores from this years tests since most of his classes this year were dual enrolled and that credit will transfer with a transcript.
You might be surprised at how quickly the scores get to the school. My daughter’s senior year AP scores got to the score before they got to her (and the college had already given her credit for them on her transcript). This was in 2012, so things might have changed.
If her classes had to be determined before the scores arrived, the college was going to assume that she had gotten the required scores to get credit.
While true, @racereer brings up a good point, At some colleges, primarily large publics (but not limited to publics and does not apply to all publics), they will make no such assumption until scores actually arrive. So if registration for new students precedes the send date of 2019 scores, and the course desired has a prereq met by a prior year’s AP score and is at risk of reaching/exceeding capacity, it’s worth spending the 15 bucks to get the old scores there earlier.
@skieurope - my DS at ASU was allowed to register for Calc 2 even though they did not have CALC AP results yet. Obviously a one-off, but if you ask and have the record to back it up, you can usually get the higher class.
As I said, rules vary by school. I would say that for most colleges, sending all scores in July present no issue. But I never want to make blanket statements, since someone reading will be attending a college that is the exception - and there are exceptions.
As always, students should research the specific policies of the school they will be attending. For the OP’s son, it is fine to have all scores sent in July, so that’s one less thing for the family to concern themselves with.
The main issue would be if (a) new frosh class selection occurs before AP scores are available, (b) the college’s registration system enforces prerequisites, (c) the AP scores are needed to fulfill the prerequisites the new frosh student needs for a desired course, and (d) the desired course tends to be full enough to be difficult to switch into later.
Of course, even if (b) is not true, and the student selects courses based on expected AP scores, but then later finds out that his/her AP score is not what was expected (particularly if it is lower), then that could still be a problem if s/he needs to change to a different course that is full.
On a related note. At our state Flagship, you have until the end of your first semester to submit all AP grades. After that, you lose the opportunity to get AP credits. As such, don’t delay reporting scores even if they are not prerequisites etc.