No AP/IB - does a kid have a chance at a highly selective college?

Applying to College
1

<p>I'm trying to develop a theory that I'd like to inject into the educational policy debate that a student must really take AP or IB classes to be admitted into a highly selective (Ivy's, etc.) college. Keep in mind, I'm excluding kids with obvious hooks - athletes, legacies, parents who are big donors or well known. Home schooled kids also have their own advantages (1:1 student/teacher ratio!) so for the purposes of this debate , I'm excluding them too.</p>

<p>My contention is that unless a student can get those college level courses from a high school (preferably), magnet school or community college, they have little chance of getting into a highly selective college regardless of the SAT's or EC's they may have. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but the percentage of kids admitted as such must be in the low single digits at any highly selective college.</p>

<p>As the old slogan goes, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste", and I'm worried that there are a lot of kids who will not make it into the best colleges because they cannot get the courses in high school that would allow them in. Anyone care to refute that, or comment about it?</p>

2

<p>Applicants to elite colleges are expected to do well within the context of their environment. No AP/IB is OK if none are available.</p>

3

<p>You are partially right, in a sense.
APs / Honors / IB courses demonstrate one’s interest to strive and go beyond HS level education to pursue a more rigorous curriculum of learning, and these are typically what collges wanna see.
However, one is still likely to be admitted in HYPMS if he shows the thing above in other fields, or in other ways, such as winning Science Olympiad (or placed Xth, at the least), being a Co-author of a science journal (you don’t need to be in HS to do that), and … just many other ways.</p>

<p>The disadvantage of homeschooling is not the unability (no such word, but you’d figure) to demonstrate your academic interest, it’s just hard to find channels to connect to them.</p>

<p>For instance, as HS student, you can just walk into the teacher responsible for Science Olympiad and say: “Hey! May I be part of the team? (then go through a evaluation, or test)” then you are in it, in representation of your school. But if your are home schooling, you have to find multiple people who are homeschooling like you, and convince them to do the thing, which is unreliable (without teacher watching your back), tedious, and often time a long process. Same thing applies to APs. Homeschooled students can take the exam too, but it’s a lot harder (in HS AP classes, just say “Yes please sign me up to the test”) to find a testing center and actually prepare for the test.</p>

<p>Anyways, get to the point, homeschooled students’ chances of being admitted into selective colleges does diminish (a little, a lot, depends) without APs / IBs / and Honors, however, with all the free time you have homeschooling (I suppose they do, if not, plz correct me.), they can also achieve a lot of great thing that are appealing to colleges, such as individual research, find a college prof. and work for him, work at places that’s related to your intended major (full time, payed, taxable).</p>

<p>Conclusion: Yes, but well… the counter argument exists, and may beat you if you can’t consolidate your statement.</p>

4

<p>It’s not surprising. Top tier school admissions MUST look for objective signs of an applicant’s inner drive and ability to perform above the rest. A measure of this is AP/IB classes. The issue is what other options can one document this achievement? That’s the real issue – not some inherent bias for AP/IB.</p>

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<p>Selective schools state clearly that they value rigor of the schedule, in the context of what is offered at the student’s high school.</p>

<p>So, if a student attends a school that offers many AP classes and the student doesn’t take any of them, that student would have low odds of admission at selective colleges.</p>

<p>However, if a student take the most rigorous schedule available at their high school, but the school doesn’t offer AP classes, the student should still have a shot at selective schools, assuming all else is good (SAT/ACT scores, grades, etc.)</p>

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<p>Thanks for the replies - what I’m really thinking about are the chances of someone (read anyone here?) getting into a highly selective college who went to a high school that had no AP’s or IB courses at all? Or, if there is any data out there as to the number of students who got admitted to those schools without that type of rigorous course work?</p>

<p>Personally, I just believe that there are probably a few kids out there, but by and large, after an admissions officer scans such a transcript, the application goes into the “probably not” pile.</p>

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<p>If they’re offered at the school and a student doesn’t take them, he or she has virtually no chance at getting into top schools.</p>

<p>If they’re not offered, the student still has a fighting chance.</p>

8

<p>Your hurdle will be for outside documentation of your special gifts and drive.</p>

9

<p>My school is located outside of the US and offers no AP classes (it does administer AP exams every spring, though; don’t ask me how or why), and only offers the opportunity to pursue the IB diploma to students from other countries (not the one I’m from), who don’t usually apply to schools in the US.</p>

<p>So most of us apply to American schools without APs/IB, and we’ve always had a lot of success.</p>

<p>There you go, anecdotal evidence against your theory.</p>