Thanks @homerdog . Good to know.
Beware “admissions speak,” try to translate. No, adcoms don’t read between the lines, fill in facts not there, assume you meant something other than you write. or make excuses for you.
But while it may be “not fair to assume a bad score when there could be other reasons the score is missing,” that does not mean it’s not important to report or that they don’t go looking for AP scores and expect strong in those related to your major (OP is STEM) and certain other cores. This thread should remember OP asked abut one score and “targeting top Ivy and like schools.” Most other kids will report their best and most relevant AP scores. OP can skip the APCS score and be fine.
No the grade is not more important. What is important in this thread is that OP got 5 5-scores and APCS is not that important a class, not determinant, not a core, and not universally well designed at so many high schools across the country. Sure, it’s tangentially related to stem, but not like failing to report scores for core AP science or math.
If you took the class and it shows as a class on the transcript, not reporting the score doesn’t magically erase it, in a college’s eyes. A hs may require you to take the test (and you did) but that’s the hs. They likely won’t know you didn’t report it to colleges.
NO, these sccores do NOT appear on all transcripts. And no, a 3 score, fine as it may be, across the vast pool of test takers, is not something you necessarily want to show on an app to a tippy top. Not when it’s not among themore important scores.
I can see both sides on this one. But for an engineer to report a 3 in CS is not ideal. OTOH not reporting, might make a careful reader assume an even lower score and many AP courses just aren’t that well taught so in the context of the school a 3 might be a pretty good score. I lean toward just leaving it off as there are all kinds of reasons why one might not have taken an AP exam including being sick on the day of the exam. Official score reports are sent after you have committed to a college.
Our college counselors guided students to report all scores of 4 and 5 and omit the others. There are, as noted, plenty of good reasons to not take the AP exam itself. There are fewer good reasons for scoring 3 or below, especially if the grade in the class was good.
In general, passing AP scores (3+) are not harmful. Sure, 4s and 5s can help, but even then most schools are going to use them more for context than for evaluation. This is a source of much consternation to top students, but you really don’t need to sweat it if you report a few 3s. Colleges use your transcript FAR more than your AP scores to evaluate your academic ability.
One exception to this might be a homeschooled student whose grades are assigned by a parent. In that case, the AP score can carry a lot more weight because it reflects on the quality of the coursework.
Again, OP said tippy tops. Anyone generalizing is missing the extreme competition there. And again, in holistic for a TT, it all matters and one flaw can pose great risk.
There were many students at my D’s school that didn’t sit for the AP tests because of cost (school didn’t pay for it). That didn’t seem to hurt them in college admission. Not sure though if the GC mentioned that in their LOR.