I want to be able to show colleges that I learned some form of Chemistry, and I also want to learn Chemistry myself. My schedule is full and I might not be allowed to take AP Chemistry or cannot take it altogether if I can get into AP Physics I. Would the Great Courses Plus course on Chemistry and Our Universe, alongside with one of the AP review workbooks (Barron’s, Princeton, etc.) be a good foundation for taking the AP test?
And on a side note, for any of you who have watched Chemistry and Our Universe, do you think it could supplement for honors Chemistry, or as a prerequisite for AP Chemistry?
You should take Bio, Chem and Physics at some point in your HS career and hopefully an AP version of one of them.
For admissions, self-studying Chemistry has no effect…colleges care about your grades in a class, not your AP scores.
What year are you in?
What sciences have you taken so far?
Why can’t you take Chemistry (even just Honors Chem)?
Why don’t they care about your AP scores?
Doing well in a class shows you can learn over the year and work hard over a period of time. That is what they want in college.
Not all HS have many APs.
Many people take AP tests senior year which is too late for admissions
For example, Stanford says:
Students currently enrolled in AP courses are not required to submit AP scores as part of our admission process. AP scores that are reported are acknowledged but rarely play a significant role in the evaluation of an application. Grades earned over the course of a term, or a year, and evaluations from instructors who can comment on classroom engagement provide us with the most detailed insight into a student’s readiness for the academic rigors of Stanford. http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/prepare.html
I will be a sophomore in the following school year. I took Honors Biology, and I want to take AP Physics 1 and C, which is what my school offers. That restricts me from taking the AP version of all 3 of them, or even an honors variant, as each one of them takes up an entire school year. For an AP grade in a class, while it does provide a college with information, I would think that taking the test without the class would show your capability in the subject itself. I’m planning on self studying both calc and a science since my school wouldn’t allow me to skip math, and my schedule doesn’t allow for another science class. Would they not care about the AP test score, even if you didn’t take the class and got a 5 or a 4 on it? I get that the AP tests are obviously less worthy than the class itself, but without the class, I would assume they would take a good look at the AP tests and their scores.
@AgentLOL Let us say your school doesn’t offer that many APs, and the ones that you are offered are for Senior year. This is the case for many HSs. You would not take the AP test until after you are accepted to college. So taking into account AP test scores as a major part of your admission criteria would not be fair as many people would not be able to do that.
You would get college credit if you passed the exam.
@bopper Comparing myself to others would not work very well, yes. However, individually, wouldn’t it be able to be used to compare to other people with a grade in a class? I mean, they can easily rank a 5 as equivalent to an A, 4 to B, 3 to C, 2 to D, 1 to F. Also, the AP test covers all of the curriculum in an AP course anyways. This is why I think it seems weird. You can’t compare it on an AP Test to Ap Tests, but you surely can use it to compare against grades in other classes. It’s just another way of representing your knowledge apart from the usual transcript.