Pros and Cons of AP Credit vs Placement vs skip

Colleges and Universities A-Z The University of Texas at Austin
1

Caution is given, but left ambiguous, as to whether it is advisable to request only placement, or go for full credit AP exams.

Son is a PII and Deans Scholar, planning to major in math and history. Econ also possible 3rd.

Can anyone expand on the issues? A few are mentioned on the key webpage to apply for credit, eg Be-on-time loans et al.

Some AP credits would give hours, but not fulfill any requirement other than electives. This is understood.

Are there any key trade-offs or non-obvious issues besides whether it satisfies any degree requirement?

Example of AP’s in question:
AP English could give credit for RHE306
AP Stats could give credit for M316 or STA309
But neither of these classes help any of the degrees, and the required classes get enough total hours that the extra classes don’t seem to help.

Any additional insights?

2

One option is he has enough to get 30 hours credit and begin as a sophomore. Not sure if this is a good or bad idea…

3

In the case of the two you are describing, the only advantage I see is to take them to satisfy the requirements for elective credit. That would allow one or two semesters of a lighter load which would be nice to offset a tough class or two in a particular semester. Not sure that is even possible if you are double and possibly triple majoring. There is no rush to take the credit though and you really don’t have to decide until you get to the semesters where you will be registering for those electives.

4

My son used 19 AP hours. I don’t know for a fact but it seemed to boost his registration time b4 other students with less credit. He always seems to get his classes while others with less credit in same major were securing less than 12 hours and fighting for classes on wait lists each semester. I would suggest taking credits as it is minimal expense. We only petitioned for credit never placement.

5

So, your question is what disadvantage is there?

Money, basically. They cost around $20 per course, and you won’t get anything out of it.

Credits that go toward your degree bump up your degree completion percentage, which boosts your registration time. Electives do not help your degree completion percentage, and in fact, can cause the percent to go down, if you have more credits that are worthless, than credits counting for requirements.

I can’t think of a single advantage to claim credits you don’t need. As a double major, you won’t even need them to reach 120 hours.

Freshmen/sophomore standing has no affect on anything, that I know of.

I think you are confusing claiming credit compared to placement, vs. claiming them at all.

Claiming anything for placement is truly, truly worthless. You don’t even get hours for that.

So, I assume your main question is why shouldn’t you claim them. If you wanna burn money, go ahead. But then you won’t be eligible for any tuition rebates either.

6

@longhonrs061012,
Very helpful. Thank you!!!

7

@Longhorns061012 Upon further review…

  1. One advantage of getting to 30 hours is it allows you to apply for an additional major, even though some of your hours are outside of your degree plans. He is math and Plan II, but also wants History. History dept wont let him add major until he has 30 hours.

  2. Mathematically though, shouldn’t %-of-degree-completed be totally independent of any extra hours?
    I.e., numerator is number of degree-required-hours-fulfilled and denominator is ttl-number-of-degree-required-hours for degree.

Required-Hours-fulfilled / Required-Hours = %-degree-plan-completed

If it was Required-hours-fulfilled divided by Required-Hours+non-Required-but-completed-hours, then extra hours would hurt you.

Required-Hours-Fulfilled / (Required Hours + Any Extra Hours Completed)

It would seem logically that Extra Hours don’t help, but that they should not hurt for registration priority…

8

  1. Ah I see, well that may be tricky since you can only officially have 2 majors. P2 have unofficial 3rd majors I know, but technically at UT only 2 can be listed. Might want to work it out with his advisor to see which major should be unofficial for now anyway. (Some majors also require those 30 hours to be in residence, meaning no AP, so check on that too). History would probably have the least restricted courses of those 3, so it might make sense to have History unofficial.

  2. It doesn’t go by that formula, it’s hard to explain unless you’ve seen a degree audit. Certain requirements bump you up way more than others. Like taking courses required for your major helps more than basic requirements, etc. The algorithm is weird, but I see the trends. Your 8 hour science sequence helps way more than 8 general elective hours.

9

Regarding number 2- even though the electives would not help as much as the sciences, the electives would not hurt, right?

10

I was just told by an advisor in the history dept that the degree-progress prioritization only kicks in after your first semester…

In same conversation, they said the 30 hours progress was not really an issue for getting in to a class.

mixed messages…

11

To add an additional major, the 30 hours must be in residence so don’t think AP credit will help with this.