Taking AP outside of school?

Okay, so my school only offers AP calculus, which I probably won’t be taking as I’m not very good at math. If I did want to test outside of school, I would have to pay a lot of money for tutoring/classes (I live in a small town, and prep centers are around $1500-2000), or attempt to self-learn. A lot of my people at my school have already been getting outside help for AP tests for 1-2 years, and it seems like it’s really important for uni. I don’t know why my school doesn’t offer any AP classes, but I believe it’s the path all the good students take, because we can request to have our school let us take AP tests (they can book a test for you to take in school, but won’t give you classes for it).

I feel like I really should do AP. I’m already behind in my ‘high school class track’ because most everyone else took pre-requisites online or during the summer. Now, I’m stuck in classes with a lot of people who don’t care about grades or are in ELL, because the school assumed everyone who was a good student already took them. I feel so behind, and I will be even more if I don’t do some APs… Also, my friends from other schools have been taking pre-AP or AP for at least a year already.

Also, how hard are AP tests? I’ve tried some online, and flunked really bad (w/o prep), but other people in my school go through 3-5 per year without breaking a sweat. Should I do this? Any advice on how difficult it will be if I self-learn?

If I choose to go AP, I’ll probably do AP Psych and/or APUSH. :-S

Do you have a community college close by? If you do, I would recommend looking at classes there instead of spending your time on AP calc. If you do well, it looks better than AP on your transcripts.

If that’t not an option for you, I would skip it. Take AP Psych if you really want to, and focus on making the rest of your application stand out.