Hey!
My strategy throughout high school has always been to barely pass lots of AP exams, instead of getting 5s on fewer. For example, these are my scores:
Chemistry: 1
English Language: 3
Physics 1: 3
Environmental Science: 3
Psychology: 4
U.S. Government: 4
Macroeconomics: 4
Statistics: 4
U.S. History: 4
I feel as if instead of barely passing and getting 4s on 8 exams, I could have put all that energy into only 5 exams and gotten all 5s (US History, Psychology, U.S. Government, Macroeconomics, English Language).
The UCs award credit for 3s and up. Would it have looked better on my college app (ivy leagues included) to get straight 5s on 5 exams?
You haven’t really showed excellence or mastery in any subject. You just look like someone who tried to jam in as many AP Exams as possible instead of really mastering a few select AP exams (because that’s what you did).
But I’m not one to say whether one “strategy” is better than the other.
AP scores are typically used for credit, rather than determining admissions, I would probably not self-report most of those 3s or 1s, unless the distribution, like for Physics 1, shows that very few people get 4s and 5s. If you get credit, that’s good I guess, but barely mastering the content and then getting credit for it will hurt you if you take classes above those, and for the most part, threes are worth general or basic credit, (like a 3 for bio is typically awarded the lowest biology class available, which wouldn’t count for credit for biology majors or most others that specifically require it), so I would say to focus more on a few to get those 5s.
What you are doing is perfect. Look at two students, student a takes 3 APs a year and gets all 5’s. Student b takes 7 each year and gets all 3 and 4. When all is said and done, at most state universities, a will have 6 classes while b will have twice that.