By the end of junior year I will have 7 APs. Will colleges see a big disparity between me, with 7 APs and scholar with distinction, compared with someone with 8 APs and national scholar? I guess my question is one more AP (7 vs 8), going to give someone a leg up in admissions because they have the title national AP scholar?
Without knowing the overall picture, including how many/what AP’s are offered, I would say no.
AP awards are nice to have, but in the grand scheme of things, really matter very little IMO.
Nope. The awards are the College Board’s marketing ploy to rope students into taking more exams! Schools know what those awards mean-nothing beyond the scores of the tests you took. No worries!
So the consensus is that 7 vs 8 APS isn’t big even though it’s the threshold for national scholar?
Agree with all of the above. It doesn’t matter.
My kid had 12 AP’s and 5’s on all of his tests.
The only thing that matters are the scores to help get out of basic GE requirements. They really won’t help, that much, with admission.
It doesn’t matter if you have 7 APs w/o National AP Scholar or 8 APs with National AP Scholar, just as it doesn’t matter if you’re NMSF (for admissions anyway - scholarships may be a different story) since the actual SAT score is much more important.
To generalize, more APs are better, higher scores are better, and more rigorous APs are better. And while National AP Scholar as a junior is an impressive accomplishment, it isn’t some sort of “brass ring” threshold that’ll make or break an application. Good luck.
I disagree that “more APs are better.” That just leads to the silliness of people collecting AP exams because they think it looks good to schools. It doesn’t. You just need to take the most rigorous coursework available at your schools, as determined by your guidance counselor (who evaluates your transcripts rigor when he or she checks off the box on the recommendation form.
If you are torn between taking one more AP or doing something more interesting/meaningful with your time, by all means do the more interesting or meaningful activity.