Should I put a perfect AP exam score on my college application as part of the awards/honors section? The AP is related to my major and I don’t have much else to put in that section.
No, scoring a 5 on an AP exam is not an award or honor. You could add AP scholar awards though if you have that.
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I think they mean getting 160/160 points, or whatever the max points on the particular exam is.
The answer, though, is the same. No.
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I believe they may mean scoring every possible point. A 5 can be achieved without that.
I don’t believe reporting that will have significance and certainly wouldn’t take away from sharing other achievements. GPA outweighs AP scores. While an AP score may be a nice compliment to support mastery of a subject, it’s more important after acceptance when looking for credits.
Congratulations on your perfect score! That’s still something to be proud of!
Edit: cross-posted
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DS scored every possible point on the APUSH exam several years ago. If memory serves, the letter notifying him said that only 16 people out of over half a million who took that test got every possible point, so it’s pretty uncommon (although I suppose it varies depending on which AP exam it is). In DS’s case, it didn’t do any good since he wasn’t notified until March of his senior year, long after his applications were submitted (don’t know why it took almost a year to notify him). Still, if you know about this before applying, I think it’s worth putting on the application, especially if the exam is in an area you plan on studying in college.
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If you send your AP scores (rather than self-reporting), I believe the colleges will see this information on the score report, along with AP scholar, etc. Of course, that can get expensive if you’re applying to a lot of schools, but it’s a way to get the information out there without putting it in the “awards/honors” section of your application, where it doesn’t really fit.
It’s not an award or an honor. It’s excellent test performance (congrats!), but that is not really the same thing.
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I don’t believe the perfect score appears on the score report. The college board sends out a letter to notify the people who scored every possible point. As @TheBigChef points out, a perfect score on an AP exam is an incredibly rare feat. A friend of my son’s had a perfect score on one of the econ exams a couple of years ago and according to the school press release was one of only a handful of test takers world wide to achieve that. I don’t understand the rationale for not reporting it to colleges. People list national merit, gold medals on the national Latin exam, AP scholar awards etc. in the awards and honors section of the common app all the time.
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It does not
I stand corrected, then.
I’d also personally have no problem putting this in the awards/honors section, for the same reason–a lot of awards/honors are given out for test results, and this is in fact recognized as a special achievement, as evidenced by the letters the College Board sends out, often local newspaper articles, and so on.
Will it matter? Probably not. And I note some are way more common than others . . .
But if you have the slot available, I personally don’t think it would hurt.
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I would not worry too much about awards.
Most don’t have or they put something down that’s meaningless.
It’s what you do that matters.
If you stock shelves at a grocery store or serve ice cream at baskin robins or walk dogs at the shelter - there’s no award for that.
So be concerned about what you’ve accompanied and hopefully you can quantify it. Don’t stress out over a lack of awards.
Please don’t fret about no awards or honors. One of my kids had almost nothing in that section and is finishing a master’s degree at a top university. My other kid, just graduated, had not one thing listed. He just started a great job that he loves.
I almost think that putting insignificant honors or awards in that section draws unwanted attention. It is an interesting achievement I guess, so maybe a very brief mention in Additional Information is fine.
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