S23 is applying to several top schools. GPA (UW) 4.0 (W) 4.6, Rank 6/400. 35 ACT. Prospective major: economics. ECs: pretty good. He has taken 6 AP courses so far and is taking 6 more this year. But, he has only taken 3 AP exams. He took only 1/2 his COVID virtual learning year b/c he they only had 50% of the class time compared to a normal year so preparation was poor. The next year he took 2/4 exams because he felt the most prepared for those and preferred to focus where he thought he would succeed.
He has 4,4,5 to show for it in AP World, APUSH, AP Stats. Should he report these and mention somewhere that he didn’t take them all. I’m afraid if he reports only 3 incorrect assumptions will be made. Should he report none of them? Seems if SAT/ACT are not required anywhere why would AP exams be? This year he plans to take 4/6 of the exams but one is portfolio only, no real exam.
Class of 23 had a lot going on with their AP Exams starting their Freshman year. Is your son applying to schools where he is required to report all of his AP exam results? If not - I would not report those at all or just self report the “5”s. Or a “5”.
definitely not required to report them by his school. I was leaning towards reporting none until after he enrolls and then just reporting the ones he can use for credit/placement.
When that time comes, send the whole score report. It is not worth the money to withhold scores. If a score doesn’t warrant credit / placement, they will just ignore it.
If course, if he Windsor up attending a school that gives no AP credit for his scores, no need to send a score report at all.
I’m leaning toward reporting none. AP scores really don’t move the needle much, if at all, in admissions. But I absolutely positively would not “explain” why he didn’t take 3 exams. There’s no way to put a positive spin on that
I second what @skieurope said. Never draw attention to anything that isn’t an asset to the app.
Top schools generally are ok with 4’s. I personally see no harm in reporting anything 4 and over, but I agree that there is zero point in withholding scores once he has been admitted somewhere.
And I’d normally agree. And while I doubt AO’S are spending much time wondering why some AP scores are omitted, he’d only be reporting 3/6, and 2 of those are less relevant to an econ major. If it were calc, USH, stats, then maybe.
But report / don’t report. Won’t make a big difference either way. My key message is don’t explain why scores aren’t being reported
While I don’t think AOs spend a ton of time worrying about which scores were reported, which weren’t, and why, in this situation I lean towards not reporting any.
His academic rigor and results are otherwise excellent — pretty close to perfect. I don’t think 3 scores, even if they were all 5s, would enhance what he is already reporting.