My daughter who wants to study BME and is targeting top Ivy and like schools is a rising senior. She took 6 AP classes so far and got 5 on five of them and 3 on AP Comp Science.
Is there an option not to submit poor AP Comp Science score to colleges and if there is such an option is this a good one?
She will be taking five more AP courses in her senior year but the results will be only in late spring, way after all college application and even admission decisions are made.
You can withhold the CS score by filling out the AP score withholding form on CollegeBoard’s site. It costs $10 to withhold each score, and you can define which colleges to withhold the score from.
It is up to you and your D how to handle it, but IMO a 3 in AP CS A is fine to send. I might withhold a 3 in AP CS Principles if that is the one she took. Good
luck.
Edited to Add: one can search college credit policies by AP test on CollegeBoard’s site: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/getting-credit-placement/search-policies/course/8
Searching CS A, one can see that a number of schools give credit for a 3. Always double check a given college’s AP policy on their own website though.
While true, this is a waste of money, IMO. Official reports are used for credit. The clerical processing does not care that she got a 3.
For the application, AP scores are self-reported. She can list all/some/none. If she doesn;t want to list the 3, she does not need to.
I would just list it. The big “hole” in there will look suspicious. Having a 3 is fine.
I don’t understand what The big “hole” is? Not reporting specific score for just one AP subject but reporting others?
Just to be clear. We are concerned not about getting a college credit for AP Comp Science she got 3 on but the fact that 3 on AP test can hurt her admission chances to top colleges.
@A173 AP scores are self reported, absolutely withhold the 3 and report the 5’s. No reason to submit a score that does not reflect well. If you report it, they take it into consideration. Simply leave it off. Congratulations on the 5’s!
So if the score is not self-reported does it mean the entire AP course is not reported as if she never actually took it? And if the course is reported but the score is withheld I suspect it might be suspicious when 5 other AP courses are reported with grades.
Usually for admissions the grade in AP class is what counts most to show how you handle rigorous coursework. I don’t remember D reporting scores until after acceptance but maybe that was just senior year scores.
@A173 The AP course and grade will be listed on your transcript. So yes, it’s of course still counted. AP scores are self reported, simply leave off the 3 and report the 5’s. They will use what you give them to evaluate you. Let them evaluate your transcript and your 5’s. Will they assume you got less than a 5 on CS? yes. But they will not have the exact number listed to evaluate. They can only evaluate the scores you give them. Best of luck!
I agree fully with post 2. She only bothers to list the ones she got four and five on, on the application. Her official scores will be sent to the registrars office when she matriculates, and they won’t care what scores she got.
To answer post #7, second sentence (I hate this new design, can’t copy paste from a phone anymore), that is correct to some extent, which is why I suggested to just list the 3. With the possible exception if she’s going to be a CS major, in your case. General rule of thumb is to just report anything 3 and above.
My question is if she doesn’t report the 3, does the adcom assume she got a 1 or 2. They can see she took the CS class but didn’t see a related AP score. Any concern there?
I disagree with @ProfessorPlum , and admittedly, not for the first time. While I agree that there is no harm in listing a 3, not listing it is fine, as well.
Yes, an AO may “think” something. But I am of the opinion that not listing one score will raise no red flags. Not listing 3 or more may cause an AO to wonder. The may think the the student scored a 1 or a 2. Or they may think that financial considerations prevented the student from taking the exam. Or they may think he wasn’t motivated enough to take the 4 exams… But you don’t know, and can’t control, what they may think. And really, in the 10 minutes or so that an AO reads an application, I don’t think they have the time or energy to ponder such questions.
Having said that, I am concerned about the message that the OP, a parent, is sending to the child. A 3 may be less-than-ideal, but it is not “poor” and I find it disingenuous to say so… Many of the 30=% that scored a 1 or a 2 would have loved to have received a “poor” score.
@skieurope if a student has taken 5 other exams, there is no “financial considerations” for a missing exam.
Everyone has their opinion here and you have adults and students posting here, so to the OP take everyone’s posting with a grain of salt. It is of my mindset that any missing information is going to be viewed as suspicious, and I don’t think that a 3 is worth hiding unless the course was the applicant’s major field.
I think I would agree with you on this sentence @ProfessorPlum168 , but in this case, it is in the applicant’s field, or at least a closely related one, which is the part that gives me pause. It’s not like she got a 3 on AP French
I do think that one 3 will not make or break the application whether it’s listed or not.
I didn’t know what what a BME major was until right now. UC-Berkeley doesn’t have that major but I saw UC-Davis’ sample curriculum and it seems to me like if all the required coursework are math and natural/physical science based coursework. Maybe CS coursework is required at the schools that the OP is interested in. But as you mentioned It’s probably a “doesn’t matter which direction you go in” decision.
https://bme.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk5766/files/inline-files/Four-Year-Schedule-18-19.pdf
You don’t send official scores to colleges when you apply. You just self report AP scores if you want to. No schools make that mandatory. Our S19 took AP comp sci A but decided against taking the AP test. He got 5s on the rest of his APs and just reported those. So, the AP Comp Sci A class and his grade (an A for both semesters) showed on his transcript and the schools didn’t see a score for the test. It didn’t matter. He had a very successful app season with top 20 LACs and universities. Don’t sweat this at all.
I can’t believe that adcoms don’t realize that there is more than one reason for a missing score. My son had a conflict with one of his AP exams. the regular date conflicted with the state championship meet, and unfortunately the alternate date conflicted with his school’s finals. It would have been difficult to reschedule this particular final, and as the class was one that was highly unlikely to receive credit for - he chose not to take it. My daughter managed to squeeze in one of her APs - but as it was her 3rd(!) exam of the day - an IB exam at 7 am, an AP exam at her school at 9 and this AP exam which she had to take at the district office at 1- she seriously considered whether it was worth it. With kids having so many AP and IB exams and all of the year end championship meets, I imagine there are many kids who choose to pick and choose which exams make sense and a missing score may have nothing to do with a 1 or 2 or financial hardship.
Exactly. I said so on another thread but I’ll say it again. This question was asked at a forum near us with reps from Princeton, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth and a few other schools. They ALL said they do not judge an application on what is not there. A question was asked specifically about missing AP scores and they ALL said that it’s not fair to assume a bad score when there could be other reasons the score is missing.