<p>My school offers APPsych and APES and I'm self-studying both. Does it look bad to self study AP courses that your school offers? Also, I have an option to gain credit for APPsych, but it'll be a Pass/NC grade. I've heard colleges frown upon having P/NC grades, but is it better to have a p/nc grade than no grade at all?</p>
<p>What is a Pass/NC grade?</p>
<p>It’s where you get a pass grade instead of a A, B, C, or D and a NC (no credit) grade for a F. I don’t have a choice if I want credit for AP Psych. However, it is said to look bad to colleges because an A and D is equal. Plus it doesn’t count for GPA. But it shows as an actual class on my transcript.</p>
<p>Why do you want to self-study them instead of taking the class?</p>
<p>I want to leave more slots open in my schedule for harder APs.</p>
<p>It’ll also ease the stress junior year, as these are both tests I planned on taking at some point.</p>
<p>How many AP classes does your school offer?
Taking an AP class > self-studying, when taking the class is possible.
You’d be fine even if you just took the harder APs…just take as many APs as will fit into your regular schedule and don’t worry about self-studying stuff unless you’re trying to get college credit or something.</p>
<p>I imagine the pass/fail credit will be fine as long as the class was “extra” and not part of your regular schedule.</p>
<p>Our school offers 14 APs, of which I plan to take 11 as classes (no ab, psych, or env).
Will the extra course be identified as out of the course load (or is that on a school by school basis)?</p>
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<p>Probably not, but if you have more than eight classes (or whatever is standard at your school) in a given year they’ll be able to tell that one of them probably wasn’t part of the normal school day. As long as your schedule is challenging and impressive without the pass/fail class, the existence of the pass/fail class won’t hurt you.
If you want, you can tell your colleges why it’s pass/fail in the Additional Information section of the Common App. Would it be possible to get a letter grade, though? Could you take the final and get an A on it and have an A show up on your transcript?</p>
<p>Wouldn’t such a class appear as independent study, not AP psych? There is more to a class than just the final exam (you can only test so much in a few hours) so it would seem misleading to say you took AP psych if you didn’t complete the regular assignments, take the regular tests. The students who had to pass all those extra tests, complete all those assignments, attend and participate in all those discussions/projects etc, might be a little unhappy if your transcript looks identical when you didn’t do any of that. Also, the AP grade is not available until after the year is over, so how is your performance being assessed to determine if you passed, even if it’s just pass/fail?</p>
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<p>There’s no reason it would have to. I’ve tested out of several high school classes, and they all appear on my high school transcript with letter grades the same way a normal class would.
The purpose of taking a class is to gain mastery in a subject. Many schools operate with the idea that passing the final = mastery. You shouldn’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get credit if you already know the material (except for in certain subjects where class discussion/participation plays a significant role, but IMO mastering AP Psych is mostly about being able to demonstrate your knowledge of the AP Psych material). </p>
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<p>Lol, too bad. If a school allows testing out, then everyone can test out of classes if they want to…they just choose not to. Working hard in a class is a means to an end (mastery) and not an end in itself.</p>
<p>The colleges will see quite well enough that you studied for and took the AP exam from your AP score. Schools that put a course on the transcript that was never taken, whose basic requirements (eg hours of testing well in excess of the 3 hour AP exam–and all classes have way more than 3 hours of testing, projects, papers, discussions, labs) were never met, and whose grade was established by an entirely different method than the other students taking that “same” course in that same school, are in my opinion being rather deceptive.</p>
<p>I think it’s fine to receive credit for material you thoroughly understand. That’s what self-studying AP is too. You receive college credit for mastery. It’s just the pass/no credit part I don’t like, but, as halcyon said, an additional credit, albeit p/nc, shouldn’t have a negative impact.
My school district standardizes its policies for granting credit, so I’m positive that I can’t get a letter grade. I can, however, get a letter grade for other classes, like gym and pre-AB math.</p>
<p>Many high schools allow students to obtain credits in several different ways, and usually they’re all outlined in the student handbook. A credit/grade is supposed to reflect how much knowledge you have, not how much busywork you did.</p>
<p>I’m not against giving students credit for significant learning. Just against representing independent study on the transcript as a regular class, which it is not. </p>
<p>You are skipping having to correctly answer most of the test questions in the entire course. Students in the regular class aren’t allowed to skip the midterms, quizzes, and all other exams. They have to answer far more test questions correctly to demonstrate their mastery than you do if you self study and only take one exam. Moreover, they are committed once enrolled in the class (past the first 10 days in our school). If you self-study you can quietly drop the whole thing if you feel you aren’t doing well. Students in the class who aren’t doing well don’t have that luxury. They also have to do things which you dismiss as busywork but it seems in your view anything that isn’t a multiple choice question on the AP exam is “busywork”. Papers? Discussion? Group projects? Presentations? Mock trials or congresses? Field trips? Labs? Reading original works instead of cliff notes, because why bother if you can answer the multiple choice with cliff notes? </p>
<p>On the other hand, you need to have the self-discipline to get the studying done. It’s just a different experience and I don’t see why any school would lump these things together.</p>
<p>I think that’s why our school only gives p/nc grades for ap courses. If they gave full letter grades, it would lead to the aforementioned “abuse” of the system. However, this way the self-studied APs that have their corresponding test-out options are distinguished on the transcript in an unique way.
However, I believe that self-studying should receive credit because a) it’s work on top of your (busy) course load and other activities and b) it’s much harder to grasp many AP concepts without a teacher.</p>