Princeton AP Disclosure

About ready to send my application off, but there’s one part that’s giving me pause. Under the academics section of the Common App, Princeton says “Princeton University recommends that you self-report all of your AP, IB or curriculum-based external exam results on your application.” I have reported 4/5 of the APs that I took because I scored well on them (4s/5s), but I have chosen not to disclose the 5th in my other applications because I got a 2 on it. That wasn’t a problem in the other places because they didn’t have a question like this, but the only options under the responses are that I disclosed all of them, I have none, or “other (please explain below).” I’m really not interested in telling Princeton all about how I didn’t do so hot in Calculus my Junior year (grade for the class was great though, just derped out on the Zoom exam), but I don’t want my hypothetical admission to be rescinded because I “lied” on my application either. Is this as big a deal as I’m making it out to be?

honesty is best. they won’t care about a 2 with all 5’s

They are recommending that you self report - I would not. It is true that they might wonder why you didn’t take the test. I’m not sure it is considered not honest to not follow a recommendation.

It’s more that I’m worried that if I click the “I reported all APs” option without reporting the 2, it could be considered lying. If I chose to go the full disclosure route, I would have to write a response about why I chose not to report the 2 with the rest of the APs, or just report the 2.

I would report the grade. If you don’t report the score, they’ll see that you took an AP class without taking/reporting the exam which doesn’t look good at all. If you do report it, the low score won’t have much of an impact on your application, especially since you did well in that class and on your other APs.

I wouldn’t think that the full disclosure section would require you to say exactly what score you got…if the whole point is that you’re not reporting the score, you shouldn’t have to explicitly say you got a 2 in your explanation. I would just say that your exam grade (which was harder due to the stresses of COVID blah blah) did not reflect the effort/grade from the actual class, so you didn’t report it and just leave it at that

Now I’m not sure. I didn’t know you needed to click a “I reported all” button.

I agree. If it were me, I’d mark “other,” would omit the score and would write something self-deprecating like “I’m omitting the score for one exam that I’d prefer to pretend never happened.” Or, if you wanted to be more earnest, “…for one exam whose score doesn’t reflect my mastery of the subject.”

So if the OP admits they didn’t do well on one exam, why not report that also?

I’m on the “err on the side of caution” mindset. Princeton recommends you submit all AP scores. Leaving one out because you aren’t happy with it isn’t honest, right? Leaving one out also isn’t totally following their recommendation. I would submit it. They know this is a new world than this time last year. That you did so well on the other exams is much better for your app than the one you didn’t do well on.