It is well known that colleges hope for students to take the most rigorous courseload available to the student.
However,
Wouldn’t a student be at an advantage to go to an easier school with no APs offered, thus making it much easier to get the “most rigorous” as opposed to one offering both IB and AP, basically forcing the students to stack up on these to take the most rigorous available.
Also, for top universities, would they prefer a 3.8 in most rigorous or a 4.0 in somewhat rigorous?
thanks
I would assume your regional admissions officer will know your school districts and thus know if you’re trying to game the system.
But don’t forget to consider that the student who went to the school with the lesser amount of AP classes may also be disadvantaged in the department of college readiness, and perhaps even actual intelligence.
No, this is what the most selective schools say, not all colleges. And even for the selective schools, this is not always the case; the one kid I know who is currently at Harvard took only 3 APs but their “X” factor got them admitted. You are overthinking this. Do your best work, grow as a person, and find a “fit” school. Trying to game or groom yourself for an elite doesn’t work.
They do want most rigorous. So a 3.8-3.9 GPA UW but with all APs/Honors is better looking than 4.0 UW No AP/honors.
But do keep in mind that when they say most rigorous, it also means most rigorous that YOU can handle.
If you know taking an X amount too many AP’s will actually hurt you (lower your grade a lot/health - no sleep/ etc.), then don’t do it. Colleges know you are human and have other activities instead of taking every single AP available at your school (Again, if you can handle it, DO IT).
And as someone kind of mentioned, the admissions rep will look ur courseload and grades in the context of your school. They do their research, rest assured. So do the best that you can in your school.
Most rigorous doesn’t mean as many APs as possible. It means if your school offers them you should take a reasonable number, but it doesn’t mean every single course has to be an AP course. At least in our high school which offered 22 APs the typical number of APs for kids going to selective colleges was somewhere between 6 and 10. (1 or 2 as sophomores, 2 or 3 as juniors and 3 or 4 as seniors. A handful of seniors were talking post AP math.)
I was wondering about the rigor, too. I read somewhere in CC that 4 to 8 APs are quite enough for top colleges.Then i thought if your high school offers 20 APs, 4 to 8 APs are nowhere near “most rigorous”.
Is it true that they mean “most rigorous that YOU can handle”? Doesn’t the guidance counselor compare amoung the students to decide if it’s “most reigorous” or not?
There is no standard rubric; in many cases it depends upon what the GC thinks is “most rigorous.”
It depends. If the school only offers 4 AP’s, then 2-3 might be “most rigorous;” however, if the school offers 20, 6 might not get that designation. However, assuming that the schedule is marked as most rigorous, once the applicant gets beyond a certain number of AP’s, which in my mind is 6-8, each additional one is not going to add any appreciable additional weight to the application. There may be other valid reasons to take 16 AP’s, but impressing AO’s is unlikely to be one of them.
For some schools it is not the number of the APs but the rigor of the APs. At my D’s school APUSH, AP Calc BC, APs in the Lab Sciences and AP in a World Language will get the most rigorous designation. 8 of the less rigorous APs will not.