<p>My D is a senior and is in four AP level classes. One of them is AP Bio. She is planning to study biology or a medicine related field in college. The bio class that she is in (according to her)is very behind in the content and unlikely to catch up. The teacher is new and doesn't seem to know what she is doing. For example, she didn't give a mid year exam??!!!</p>
<p>Is there any benefit to my daughter taking the AP Bio exam? Any detriment to not taking it? If she is going into a science field she will probably need to take the bio and chem courses at her college regardless of her AP score, or am I wrong on this? </p>
<p>If she takes the AP Bio exam there is a good possibility that she will do poorly due to inadequate preparation. She has to decide by tomorrow. Any wisdom is appreciated!</p>
<p>her score will not matter wrt college admissions, but if she feels that she did not learn the material properly, she should not take the college credit even if she scores high enough. (Many top colleges do not give credit for AP Bio regardless of the score.)
In short, I don’t see any reason to spend $80 on a test she will not use.</p>
<p>I’m with the other posters, save your money. My D hasn’t taken a single AP test after taking several AP classes and it did not affect her college acceptances in the least. Also, if your D is interested in biology, I feel she’d be better off taking the college level courses, starting with the intro ones, at the college where she intends to go.</p>
<p>I’d agree with the sentiments not to take the exam, especially if she doesn’t feel confident enough to get a good score. Most colleges won’t accept AP credit for an intro science being used as a major anyway.
Save the money.</p>
<p>My d had the same dilemma as a junior with chem ap test. She decided she wanted to take the intro colllege course in college–even if it was somewhat of a repeat–and not one school asked her why she didnt take it-- or the other 2 ap exams she could have signed up for.</p>
<p>Yeah. I’m thinking she should save the money (or my money, I guess) and take the intro classes at college. I just checked the websites of the two schools she is most interested in and they require a score of 4 or higher to give credit. Since this high school AP course has been a disappointment, she will benefit from taking Bio in college so that she can see if she is truly interested in it. Thanks for your replies.</p>
<p>At our school you’re required to take the test if you take the class (trying to raise our Newsweek ranking, no doubt). They do give the kids an out if it a class they can take for dual credit instead. I’m not sure how they would enforce the AP test rule though.</p>
<p>Our school also requires it. If yours doesn’t you will save the cost of the exam by her not taking it and I can’t see any advantage to her taking it. Also if she plans to study bio and her HS class is not adequately preparing her it would probably do her good to take the class again in college regardless of her AP test performance. Having said that if she chooses to take it there is no disadvantage for college admission. She can make the choice about whether or not to report her AP scores. She can even call collegeboard either before or after getting her scores and arrange to remove it from her record.</p>
<p>Okay, when she got home tonight I asked her what she planned to do about the exam and she wants to self study and take the exam. She’s curious to see how she will do. Arghhhh! I mean YEAH! I’m so proud.</p>
<p>EPTR, it’s probably not a bad idea, if she really want to do it. She will be keeping her options open, which is always good. Even if she does get a high enough score, she doesn’t HAVE to use it to place out of a college class–but it’s possible that at some point she might want to use a credit, if she has one in her pocket.</p>
<p>^^ agreed. At my college you could almost never use AP Credit in place of an actual college class, though you could sometimes use it to justify to a prof why you were ready for an upper level class. Where it really came in handy is that seniors who had a credit shortage by the time they hit their second semester, could count AP credit as college credit and still graduate. So if you needed to drop a class or you had some kind of study abroad credit snafu, you had your AP credits as a kind of cushion. Even good students never know when they might come in handy.</p>
<p>EPTR – if your d. wants to self-study, buy her a good commercial study guide. </p>
<p>My d. self-studied for a couple of AP’s using those guides and did better on the exams than the kids who had taken the underyling classes. They were easier courses conceptually than AP Bio – so your d’s experience may differ – but I’d say in hindsight those study guides were worth the $20 or so that we I paid for them.</p>
<p>My S self-stufied for several AP courses. Having the AP credits helped him register earlier (even tho he had well over the max # of credits you could get via AP at his U). We were told it would come in handy if he needed another credit e.g. for a summer school course or something. He & we have no regrets having him have all those APs.</p>
<p>My son’s college didn’t give him credit for his AP’s – but he ended up transferring to a college that did. He could not have anticipated that in the beginning, but the AP credits came in handy to fill some basic gen ed requirements that college #2 had, which weren’t part of the program at college #1. Without those AP credits, he probably would have had take much longer to graduate. So you never know.</p>