Should I send in my AP scores?

<p>Hi guys.</p>

<p>I have to send in my AP Scores to Brown soon, but I don’t know whether or not to send them. I took Chem and Calc BC Junior year, and I don’t seem to remember much from the class, even though I got great scores on the AP Exam. And I heard that if you do send in AP Exams, you can’t take yourself out of the newly-placed course you get put into. I’m afraid that if I do send in my AP Exams, I’ll be screwed over and won’t remember a thing x.x.</p>

<p>So should I send them in? o.O</p>

<p>I don’t know where you heard that you are stuck with a class, but that’s definitely not the case. For one things, Brown doesn’t really accept a ton of AP credit anyway and the credit it DOES accept goes only towards placement. If you feel rusty on Calc BC (or Calc 2 in college terms), you are more than welcome to retake the class in college. Plenty of people do for Biology and Math because they want to be sure they have a strong foundation before continuing. If you decide to retake a class, they’ll simply take the AP credit off your transcript so that it doesn’t count twice. </p>

<p>It’s better to send them in and have the credit rather than not have it on file and be stuck taking a class you don’t want to.</p>

<p>Your AP Chem score will, as far as I know, only place you into Chem 330, which is where just about everyone who took at least some chemistry in high school gets placed anyway. As SereneSilver said, your BC score will just place you into the level of calc, but you can retake it anyway if you want. Just send in all the scores.</p>

<p>Aside from class placement, does getting high AP scores help with admissions? It seems they would as they show success with college level material.</p>

<p>Wouldn’t retaking a class make more sense if you don’t get credit? It would ease one’s workload and be an easy A. Don’t see much of a downside.</p>

<p>It’s my understanding that incoming freshmen this year have been warned that if their APs give them credit for a course, they cannot decline it - i.e. you can’t choose to take math 10 if you received a 5 on the BC exam and submit your scores.</p>

<p>I might be wrong, of course, but I seem to remember a post a few weeks ago to that effect.</p>

<p>As for retaking courses for an easy A…doesn’t it seem like a waste of time to take a course if you know all the material just for the sake of getting an A? (if you do need a review, of course, that’s different.) You have 30-40 courses in 4 years at Brown, and most students find that isn’t enough to take everything they want - it seems silly to throw one away (and there are plenty of new courses that have light workloads while teaching material one doesn’t already know to consider)</p>

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<p>Calculus is just like music, tennis or golf. You don’t just get shown it once and your done. I’m sure 90% of students shown an integration by parts problem would pause after not having done one for 6 months. It’s a lot less stressful to be at the leading edge learning math than back on ones heals trying to keep up.</p>

<p>If you get credit on the other hand - that’s real money if you figure each class is worth $5000. Maybe you could even graduate a semester early if AP credits were offered.</p>