<p>I wasn't really sure where to post this, but here seems the best place to put it.</p>
<p>I'd be going into college next fall with a bit (not a ton) of AP credit. Depending on the three schools I'm thinking of attending, I'd be able to get out of 3, 5, or 7 classes with my AP scores. My question is, by getting out of the classes, how significantly would it effect my cost of attendence for each school?</p>
<p>School/CoA/Classes
Georgia Tech/28k/3
Tulsa/20k/5
UC San Diego/28k/7</p>
<p>It depends how many semesters early you will be able to graduate. You will have to check with the individual schools, but students generally take 3 to 6 classes per term.</p>
<p>The yearly cost of attendance won’t be affected at all; it’s really only community colleges that charge you per unit. If you have enough AP credit to graduate a semester or two early, though, that will reduce your total student loan debt.</p>
<p>A lot depends on whether the AP classes meet prerequisites for your major or gen ed requirements. D got a lot of AP credit from her school – some meets gen ed requirements, and so that really helps. She can grad a semester early if she chooses. </p>
<p>But – there’s been some cautionary notes about students using AP credits to fulfill prereqs for the major, especially for science/math majors. So, kids with AP chem credit often find that it is to their advantage to forego the college credit from AP and take the chem sequence for chem majors. Premed students are often advised to do this as well. On the other hand, D found that being able to skip the first semester of English comp and calculus (she’s a humanities major, and thus didn’t need any other math but statistics) was a tremendous gift.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that if you attend a school that charges lower division tuition the first two years and upper division tuition the second two years, that if your AP credits give you enough credits that you become a junior earlier, you may be paying higher tuition longer if it still takes you four years to graduate.</p>
<p>
A lot of large State Us also charge by the credit hour.</p>
<p>It depends. My S1’s school will accept some AP credit in lieu of some gen ed/non core classes, but not in his major track. At his college the tuition is the same for 12-18 credit hours. It really depends on the individual college/uni, their policies, etc. What my S1’s AP credits did enable himi to do was to graduate on time as he did withdraw from one class as a sophomore and some of the AP credits simply “replaced” those lost credit hours.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Really? I mean, I guess I knew that some did, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a significant amount of the costs.</p>
<p>Yeah, what I pretty much meant was would it let me graduate just a tiny bit earlier. Since it doesn’t look like it would (except UCSD, because they go on a quarter system), what is the point of using any AP credit at all? If it’s not going to get me out of there earlier and cheaper, then why not just take the classes over again and boost my GPA while I’m just reviewing?</p>
<p>S is will graduate in 3 years thanks to AP credits and it will save a considerable amount of money. A couple of caveats though:
<p>Maybe you’d rather take more interesting classes, instead of ones you already know. If your goal is just to get a high GPA, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t just retake the classes (and in fact, many people do).</p>