<p>Sorry curm, didn't mean to be harsh. It is just hard for me to understand that someone with a 5 from an AP course belongs in an intro class with students who didn't have "college level" whatever.</p>
<p>^I think you will find the advantage to be negligible because, as BDM noted, the difficulty of AP courses isn't close to the equivalent college course.</p>
<p>I don't see that AP courses are at college level. Or, I guess more correctly, I don't see that all AP courses are at the level of some colleges. I'm sure at schools where the material is more basic the advisors advise students to skip the course. I can see that. At those schools it may very well be appropriate to consider a retake GPA "padding". But as I am not familiar with every college and the difficulty of their courseload, I couldn't say.</p>
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I don't see that AP courses are at college level. Or, I guess more correctly, I don't see that all AP courses are at the level of some colleges.
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This is especially true for most AP science courses. The science AP's I took were chem, calc, and bio. I scored 5's on those exams. When I took the same intro courses at college, they, especially chem and bio, were much more difficult than the AP's. The college assignments and exams required much more time and effort, and it was more difficult to score well on them. Especially if a majority of people in your intro classes took those AP's in high school, then it's really hard to get an A, because you're graded on a curve and everyone does as well as you. Anyway, not all AP subjects should be viewed as equivalents of college courses.</p>
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AP's shouldn't be always viewed as equivalents of college courses.
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<p>I agree with this which is why I don't even like the premise of APs. Why not just have advanced/honors and make no pretense that these are college classes? </p>
<p>In fact some college professors I have discussed this with do wish that the high schools would stop AP courses or at least stop the colleges from awarding credit. They would rather have the students take the intro courses in their depts. where they know that the background material for the next level has been presented. </p>
<p>I also am not sure how/why different colleges make their decisions. For instance at Wake (which I think most people would agree has a reputation for difficult courses and work load) they will not let a student retake a course if they met the required test score to receive credit (you can take as an audit--but not for a grade). However, at a mid "level" state school I am familiar with, they allow students to retake for a grade and from what the students have told me, the course (Chem) was very easy. These same students said it would be "dumb" not to retake when the school allows it, as it was an easy "A".</p>
<p>In the long run, it is a minor point and is not really that important--I just know how obsessed premeds can get over the smallest fraction of a point in their GPA.</p>