<p>Our local public school system offers many AP courses but taking the AP exam is optional. The one local private school that offers AP courses requires that the exam be taken. How is it in your schools?</p>
<p>At our public high school, students who take the AP class are REQUIRED to take the AP exam.</p>
<p>I don’t love this…it is great for the school “numbers,” but it meant that my son had to take a couple of AP’s that we knew going in he would do poorly on, which he did.</p>
<p>travelfun – Does your school pay for the exam or is that the responsibility of the parents? At our public HS the parents must pay for the exam. There was some talk about requiring AP students to take the exam but the school administrators backed off when some parents complained to the school board about being forced to pay.</p>
<p>School pays. Otherwise, I think it would be virtually impossible to require.</p>
<p>At D’s school, I ASSUME it’s optional, but I don’t know…she’s always taken them. BUT…if you do NOT take them, then they don’t add any weight to your grade.</p>
<p>That is an interesting twist R124687. I’m guessing that the weighted grade is not reflected in the final grade for the course – since AP results aren’t known until after the school year ends – but is reflected in the weighted grade used for class ranking? Does the school give more weighting to an exam score of 5 than it does for a 1 or is the mere fact that a student took the test enough to trigger the additional weighting? Sounds like a backhanded way of requiring kids to take the exam.</p>
<p>We are required to take them and pay for them ourselves. If you are unable to afford the fee they will waive it.</p>
<p>It isn’t required at our school, but it makes absolutely no sense to take an AP class and not take the exam unless your doing it for GPA or something.</p>
<p>it’s optional at my school. and we have to pay for all of the tests ourselves</p>
<p>At my son’s private school, each student in an AP class is expected to take the AP exam (and to pay the full fee of $86 per exam). If a student does not take the exam, he gets no extra weighting (+1.0) for the AP class. The score on the exam is not considered in the grading for the class.</p>