Role of AP Credits & Graduation

<p>From the way I've added up my AP credits, I've got around 30 of 'em.</p>

<p>How do AP credits affect us? Do they help us graduate earlier? </p>

<p>Are they ignored if we want to go to graduate school? </p>

<p>Do we take the classes we took over again? ie. I got a 5 in AP Psych, for grad school, if a requirement is psych, would I still have to take the class?</p>

<p>Please, please explain for this very confused freshman</p>

<p>For the most part, AP credits can be used instead of elective credits or for prereqs. if applicable. Since you have 30 AP credits, you will come into Berkeley with sophomore standing, meaning that you will be able to pick classes before incoming freshman with less than 30 credits.</p>

<p>For graduation, you technically need 120 credits to graduate so if you finish your major prereqs. in 3 years you should be able to graduate then.</p>

<p>I don't know what your major's policies are but some AP credits can be used to fulfill major requirements and some can not be used. For instance, AP Calc can usually be used to fulfill Math 1A and 1B but (at least for me) just taking AP Macroecon. is not enough to pass out of Econ 1. </p>

<p>AP credits cannot be used to fulfill breadth requirements.</p>

<p>Do you know about graduate school? Do they frown upon using AP credits?</p>

<p>Most graduate schools expect a fair amount of upper-division coursework so taking the bare minimum will be frowned upon by the admissions office.</p>

<p>AP credits will show up on your transcript, which will be seen by graduate programs, but I completely agree with zjodak. Graduating in three years really isn't necessary; there are plenty of academic and extracurricular opportunities here , so what's the rush? I was talking to my Economics faculty advisor and he told me that if I'm interested in graduate schoo, it's really all about learning as much as I can (echoing exactly what zjodak just said). </p>

<p>Regarding your Psychology hypothetical situation, you would only need to retake it if the Psychology department here doesn't allow AP credits to be used. Your AP credits really have to be analyzed in context of your major department; all credits count towards your 120 unit minimum, but only a few or none at all may count towards fulfilling prerequisite courses.</p>