I will be taking AP Bio and AP English. But I am worried because I honestly think I won’t do well on these. I saw some thread that said they didn’t get into the college because they didn’t send the AP’s scores at all or did bad on them. I want to go to Notre Dame and was wondering if this would affect the admission chance greatly… And I’ve been asking these a lot and getting different answers from people. Do you think the fact that my parents work at Notre Dame would help my chance?
Yes the fact that your parents work there would help with admissions. But if you don’t think you can do well in advanced classes what makes you think attending a rigorous competitive college with competitive top peers is the best match for you? APs are nothing compared to actual college classes. The more rigorous the school the more rigorous the classes. Right?
The fact that your parents work at Notre Dame will get you in if you have the grades, scores, etc. Are they professors? Admissions wouldn’t want to insult the schools faculty.
Actually I sort of disagree with that. I know there was a link by the Harvard dean about how important they consider APs but I think like everything else, it is unequal.
As for certain schools being more rigorous than others, true but it is not always a straight line correlation with ranking. JHU and CMU both have reputations for extreme rigour Harvard does not.
This is just OP’s perception, may do fine. Next, we do not know how good the teacher is, perhaps the teacher is one who should have retired years ago and is doing the kids in his class a disservice by continuing to work. We do not know what else the kid is doing, perhaps he or she is on a competitive team that practices 5 hours a day which OP will not continue in college (note colleges will not accept this as an excuse for a bad grade in the AP class). Perhaps OP is at a religious school, given the interest in Notre Dame and instead of taking 4 or 5 classes the way a college student would, is taking 9 or 10 that require a lot of work and essays, such as bible, theolog. Perhaps OP has an hour each way commute.
At my kid’s HS there is a teacher in one of the more subjective subjects who loves undergrading kids that end up getting 4 and 5s because he says “this is a college course and needs to be graded like one.” Without taking into account that at college a kid can just roll out of bed at 10AM and make his 10:15 class and be done for the day by 12:45, as opposed to having to wait for a school bus at 6:45 in the freezing cold and getting home 12 hours later.
Personally, while it is not great to not send an AP score, it is worse to get a bad grade in class.
Rarely does anyone know the true reason why the didn’t get accepted into a college. Schools don’t come back and tell you things like “you took AP classes but didn’t submit scores”. They simply send a polite rejection, and then it’s all speculation.
AP scores at admission are self-reported, not official. And students won’t know all their AP scores since they won’t take senior year AP tests until well after accepting an offer of admission.
It can be more important to some schools to see that you took a rigorous course load (including AP if offered) and did well in the class than to have a high AP score - a low AP exam score just means you won’t get college credit for the class.
Are you only worried about the exams, or are you worried about your grade in the classes? You should aim to take classes that challenge you, but not where you risk failure.
If you’re struggling with the AP Bio and English exams, perhaps you should NOT be considering top 20 schools.