<p>Is it worth to self study APs and get 5 on atleast some of them when your school does not offer any AP class ?
How much weight do they hold in college app if they are self studied and student still gets 5 on some of them .
I will be applying to top schools like MIT , Harvard , Yale and I am an International student .
Please reply .</p>
<p>Yes! It is very much worth it. If you self-study APs you will show colleges your passion for learning, your ability to take initiative, and your ability to handle a challenging workload. This is especially useful for MIT admissions. Of course, you will also learn college-level material and be able to get college credit once you go to college (at MIT, you can get transfer credit for the calculus, physics, or humanities APs if you get 5s).</p>
<p>No! Or at least not certainly.</p>
<p>While lidusha is right in part, self-studying MAY show a passion for learning, be aware that self-studying for APs is decidedly a mixed bag. MIT (as with any competitive school) is looking to evaluate what choices you make when you are not in class. A student who spends all of their time alone in their room self-studying for AP exams is demonstrating a certain amount of intellectual curiosity and perhaps some discipline, but also they are not demonstrating any ability to work in groups or function in a larger community which are skills that are an integral part of working in the sciences today.</p>
<p>Working in a physics lab today is a team sport, there are a group of people working closely together towards a common goal. It is useful to be able to demonstrate that you have these skills, and there are many ways to do so. If you are on your secondary school’s football team, then there is some evidence of that skill, ditto if you are in the school orchestra, or the drama society or what have you. In other words, the precise METHOD by which you demonstrate your ability to collaborate is a lot less important that the fact that is is demonstrable. There are a wide variety of other “good things”, leadership, social fluency, impact on campus, strength of character, and others that are also often best demonstrated out of class.</p>
<p>Most competitive schools do care deeply about what you do in your free time, because they are trying to get a picture of who you are, and that really only comes out in the choices that you make. At a great many schools, you have limited choices as to what you take. So when a candidate worries that he doesn’t have any AP classes because his school did not offer any, well then they shouldn’t fret. It doesn’t matter as it does not show any student choices.</p>
<p>By contrast what you choose to do in your spare time shows a great deal about a student. MIT is a highly collaborative place, science is generally made up of collaborative fields of study, and most scientific work evolves out of some form of team-working. Scientists and engineers also succeed based on their ability to communicate their ideas, and MIT values communication skills highly.</p>
<p>Given that, I am always curious why a student believes that spending their limited free time alone in their room with a book is something that might impress competitive colleges. A real love of mathematics is a fine thing. I have a decent library of recreational mathematics books myself, but there are other ways to demonstrate this.</p>
<p>If you want to self-study combinatorics, linear algebra, or Fourier transforms in your spare time because you love it, then that is great. You go do that. And put it down. It really does show something about who you are. But don’t do it largely to impress MIT. Not only is that wrong, but it is likely to have the wrong effect. </p>
<p>I meet a lot of students with strong academics who believe mistakenly that the best way to enhance their application would be to spend all of their free time alone in their rooms improving the already perfectly reasonable academic component of their application. Then, when they do not get in, they fault themselves for not spending more time alone working harder on their academics.</p>
<p>That is not to say that any of this applies in this case, but anyone RELYING on self-study to set them apart from the crowd, may be misleading themselves.</p>
<p>^Mikalye is completely right. Ideally, you would self-study APs <em>and</em> do amazing real-world things outside of studying.</p>
<p>Thank you both for your replies.</p>