So my AP scores aren’t that great. This past year (junior year), I received 4 in USH, 4 in Spanish Language, 3 in English Language (self studied), and 2 in Chem :(. I suffered from an injury in the month of May (when AP’s took place) and I was in and out of the hospital a lot which caused me to miss a lot of class and also cut into my studying time. I was (and still am) on crutches because of that. However, I really don’t want to sound as if I am spewing excuses for my subpar scores when I apply. So, would it be better to report ALL of the scores (including chem), just report my highest scores, or not report any AP scores. I am not sure how important AP scores are in the admissions process for Yale (Yale’s my top choice for Questbridge btw)
If your AP classes will appear on your transcript, colleges expect you to have taken the corresponding AP test, as it’s the culmination of an AP class. If you don’t self-report your AP test results, Admissions may assume one of three things:
(a) You couldn’t afford to take the AP tests
(b) You didn’t take the test because you didn’t care enough
(c) You took the AP tests and scored badly – as in you got a 1.
While the first explanation is acceptable and can be easily verified if you apply for a fee-waiver for a college’s applications fee, the other two are not.
So, my recommendation is to always self-report all your AP test scores and let the chips fall where they may, as you don’t want colleges to think you are a slacker or that you scored a 1.
A grade of 3 means you are qualified, and 4 means you are well qualified – both of which are fine. See: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/ap/scores
If you fail to report the score, it appears as though you are hiding something – and you are. That’s a misrepresentation by omission. And, IMHO, it doesn’t speak well to your integrity and honesty, and doesn’t exemplify the kind of student the ivies are looking for. My advice is to submit all your AP scores. If you are rejected, it will not be because of your AP tests.
I was too late to edit the above and add:
Your score of 2 is indeed low, but if you spent a lot of time in the hospital, I’m guessing your grades from the time are low as well. So you are going to need your guidance counselor to write against those lower grades and your AP score in your Secondary School Report (SSR). With an explanation from your GC, you should be fine. See page 2 of SSR: http://ugadm.northwestern.edu/documents/UG_Admissions_SecondarySchoolReport.pdf.
I would report them all, but I wonder if there’s an obligation (implicit or explicit) to report a score for which you self-studied.
I know Gibby mentioned this twice, but I want to repeat it one more time. If your GC discusses your injury, it’s an explanation of the circumstances. If you discuss it, it sounds like an excuse. Follow up with him/her.
I really don’t agree with that “three simple reasons”. Classes are independent from tests, and if someone chooses to not occupy so much of their time taking a test that they won’t get credit for, it’s not that they “don’t care”, it’s that they might feel colleges sometimes “don’t care”. I’ve not taken three tests I was eligible to take. Why? Although I don’t qualify for fee waivers, it’s still a chunk if change I didn’t want to pay when I knew that I would not be getting credit for the tests, which were all not my intended field of study, at any of the colleges I was looking at. Mind you, I was pulling 5’s on the practice tests in class without studying. Also, as a victim of block scheduling, some students don’t have the opportunity to take the class up until the ap test. My AP Calc class ended in December. It is not fair to expect that student to want to be tested on material the same way a student who is still taking the class is tested. Just my two cents.
While you might not agree, Admissions Directors think differently: http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/prof/counselors/tests/ap/ap_05_value.pdf
If that’s what the Director of Admissions at UT thinks, I imagine the AO’s at your state school think the same way, as well as the AO’s at HYPSM. For example,
Just saying . . .
Here’s proof that AO’s do consider your AP scores.
I wasn’t arguing against the point that tests do work to confirm the rigor of the class. I am saying that colleges don’t automatically assume you “didn’t care enough” or failed if a score isn’t reported. Yes, taking an ap class and not having a score to report isn’t helpful to an application, but it in no way suggests that the student in question should be detrimented by not having a score. Also, as the above email seems to indicate, it is possible for the school to see if you have taken the tests or not, as the school would not ask for test scores if the tests were never taken. Just as those who show up on a test day and become ill and completely bomb a test should not feel extremely detrimented by a bad score in the admissions process, so too should the students who, for whatever reason, did not take the test despite excellent performance in class. Again, it doesn’t help, but it’s not a hit to the application of an immediate “Oh that student doesn’t care.” Carry on.
Colleges would have no idea if you took an AP test or not unless you told them. Colleges may assume by looking at the transcript and seeing an AP course that there should be a corresponding score report, and in not seeing one, dig further, hence the email. While I agree that in the grand scheme of things, the AP score, or lack thereof, probably will not have that big of an influence on the final decision, I also agree with @gibby that the lack of a score report may raise an eyebrow and that an AO may pursue as @Falcon1 notes above.
@typeakid: In another thread, you wrote about applying next year to Barnard or Columbia.
FWIW: Based upon a presentation from Peter Johnson, a senior Admissions Officer at Columbia to parents at Stuyvesant High School (both my kids attended the school), if Columbia is interested in an applicant, the lack of self-reported AP scores does raise an eyebrow, especially at a school like Stuyvesant, where the top 10% of students take 8 or more AP classes – and virtually every student takes the AP test following the AP class, as the Stuyvesant Parents’ Association pays for any student to take the test who may not have the recourses to afford it.
So at Stuyvesant the only reason a student doesn’t take an AP test is because they didn’t care enough about the test to take it. (Or, they were ill when the test was given, in which case that is noted on the guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR).)
Maybe things are different at your high school. Do the majority of students at your high school take an AP test following an AP course? And if a student doesn’t take the AP test following an AP course, does your GC rate the rigor of your curriculum the same as student’s who do take the test?
See Secondary School Repot, page 2, top right hand section, where your GC rates the rigor of your course load: http://ugadm.northwestern.edu/documents/UG_Admissions_SecondarySchoolReport.pdf
You had reported in your Chance thread that your family income was <$200,000. It doesn’t appear that paying for three AP tests would have been especially burdensome for your family. Moreover, if you were scoring 5’s without practice, what would have been the harm in taking the tests? Wouldn’t it have been at worst a neutral impact to take the exams and get 5’s (if your view about the tests not being important was correct) or possibly a mild to strong positive if you were wrong? Because of grade inflation and uneven teaching standards at different schools, a high AP score helps to confirm a good grade in an AP class. Very few of the top performing kids applying to elite schools will choose not take the AP exams of classes they are in so for those who don’t, they are at a disadvantage - perhaps for the reasons @gibby discusses.
No, as @skieurope stated, colleges don’t know if you took an AP exam or not. They see an AP course on your transcript and assume you took the corresponding exam. If they don’t see an AP score (that you self-report), they can request it as they did for the applicant I quoted above. However, this requires time and effort, so in most cases they won’t bother trying to get the score(s), but they also won’t be giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt.
DS took the opposite approach. He was an IB student, so he didn’t have many AP classes and his school was better known for humanities than science, so he took 7 AP tests during junior year so that any questions the AOs had would be answered, without their having to ask :).
^^ I imagine that kind of “drive” helped your son stand-out in the admissions process, as it showed determination and the ability to go above and beyond what other high performing student’s might have done. It will be interesting to see what school’s @typeakid is admitted to, as his/her attitude is not IMHO associated with a “type A” student, or at least not in my experience what selective college Admissions want, or expect, to see from a stellar student with top grades.
So sorry for moving this thread in an off-topic direction. To clarify, the only thing i intended to say was that you are not seen as an irredeemable applicant if an ap score is missing from a class for whatever reason. I’m just not a test frantic person (only took ACT and SAT once) and I don’t see the point in taking tests that may not be beneficial in the long run. At my high school, the tests are not pushed onto students if the credit granted will not help them in college. The rigor of the class is weighed no differently if the test is not taken, especially since some AP classes end five months before the exam is given. This was the case for one of the tests I didn’t take, and due to extracurricular franticness during the spring, I would not be able to attend any of the review sessions. In fact, one of my teachers was happy I wasn’t pressuring myself int doing so many tests despite not taking the one for her own class where I was a top performing student (weird I know, but that’s the environment at my high school). Also, I know my family income is high, but I also have two siblings both in very expensive colleges and private lessons for my intended career. To me, it seemed to be ok to lighten this load ever so slightly if there would be no financial returns for the tests I didn’t take. I’m sorry if I seemed like a slacker, but it’s not correct to say that an application is stereotyped harshly for a missing score. There are myriad reasons and cannot be put into three main assumptions. I agree that there will be an “eyebrow raise”, but it won’t make or break an application. That’s all I was trying to respond to and did not want this conversation centered on my personal merit.
^^ Thanks for that @typeakid.
Trying to get this thread back on topic: I was recently private messaged a similar question to the one the OP asked, but about Harvard. Below is my exchange. I assume what is true for Harvard is also true for Yale, Princeton, Stanford et al.
The following describes a technically different situation, but as often happens, the underlying truth is the same:
User LyricalLacuna reported on what her father’s take on the situation was.