I am a rising senior who will applying SCEA to Yale this fall. Yale is my dream school. However, my main concern is my AP Scores. I got a 4 in USH and 3s in AP English Lang and in AP Chem. Should I report these, if any, of these scores, or shall I just not report them? How much will low AP scores or not reporting them hurt my chances?
Thanks!!!
If your AP classes will appear on your transcript, colleges expect you to have taken the corresponding AP test, as it’s the culmination of an AP class. If you don’t self-report your AP test results, Admissions may assume one of three things:
(a) You couldn’t afford to take the AP tests
(b) You didn’t take the test because you didn’t care enough
(c) You took the AP tests and scored badly – as in you got a 1.
While the first explanation is acceptable and can be easily verified if you apply for a fee-waiver for a college’s applications fee, the other two are not.
So, my recommendation is to always self-report all your AP test scores and let the chips fall where they may, as you don’t want colleges to think you are a slacker or that you scored a 1.
A grade of 3 means you are qualified, and 4 means you are well qualified – both of which are fine. See: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/ap/scores
If you fail to report the score, it appears as though you are hiding something – and you are. That’s a misrepresentation by omission. And, IMHO, it doesn’t speak well to your integrity and honesty, and doesn’t exemplify the kind of student the ivies are looking for. My advice is to submit all your AP scores. If you are rejected, it will not be because of your AP tests.
Thank you for your advice. I think I will report them, especially since I know of I don’t get in its not because of the AP scores. @gibby
@gibby Are those the only reasons they think of though? This year I took 8 classes but only chose
^^^ care to complete that sentence.
What else do you expect them/want them to think. Yale gets 30K applications a year. @gibby 's post summed it up well. I do not believe that the admissions office has the time or the inclination to further analyze your AP scores. You’re overthinking this.
Or, put it another way: http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/prof/counselors/tests/ap/ap_05_value.pdf
If that’s what the Director of Admissions at UT thinks, I imagine the AO’s at UNM (your state school) think the same way, as well as the AO’s at HYPSM.
Here’s one applicant’s experience with not reporting AP scores. Apparently, they do matter.
@join20, I will be a Freshman at Yale starting next month. Yale is one of the universities that requires submission of all test scores from SAT, SAT II, and ACTs taken (no super scoring or score choice). It is your call, none of us is an AO, but I would suggest self-reporting all AP scores.
@cttwenty15, unless they’ve changed something, I believe that the requirement is that you report all high school scores from at least one testing organization.
You do not need to report any middle school talent search scores (and let’s leave those out of the below).
If you report any SAT/SAT2 scores, you must report all of them.
If you report any ACT scores, you must report all of them.
@IxnayBob, Ah, you are absolutely correct, when I applied to Yale last year it was exactly as you have posted (I did not take the ACTs so there was no either/both). Thank you for the correction.