The effect of good AP scores on college admissions

<p>as said. i've been reading so many mixed reviews; many say that AP scores don't really matter and others say that it has a significant impact in the admissions process. so which is it?</p>

<p>think about it this way...
if you have good ap scores, you're in the running for admission, but if you have bad scores, you're in trouble.
you need good ap scores, but getting good ap scores doesn't neccessarily make you a better applicant</p>

<p>can you choose which ap's to submit to colleges? like..if you got 1 bad score and 10 good scores.</p>

<p>if you didn't cancel the score before they came out, i don't think you can choose which scores you choose to submit</p>

<p>" if you have good ap scores, you're in the running for admission, but if you have bad scores, you're in trouble."</p>

<p>i disagree with the above statement. i think AP scores are just the icing on a perfectly good cake. if you have bad scores (but good grades) this may mean that your teacher did not necessarily prepare you well enough...which is another story. However, if you have, let's say, a B in English, a 5 on the AP exam would just show colleges you CAN write/read pretty well and ur teacher must have been tough.</p>

<p>D got accepted to 7 out of 7 schools last year...NYU, Barnard, Brandeis, GW, American, Binghamton,and Muhlenberg. She put on her applications what AP's she had taken and which were in her senior year schedule, but did not report any grades. No one asked, and she didn't volunteer them. She had a mix of scores from 2 (AP physics) to 5's.</p>

<p>So my short answer is...no, AP grades are not that important!</p>

<p>A good AP score will prove that you can do college-level work, so it will be a positive factor in the admissions decision; however, a bad score will not constitute an automatic rejection.</p>

<p>I think that a high AP score proves any or all of:
1) You have a good teacher that prepared you well
2) You're smart and/or you pay attention
3) You're good at taking achievement tests</p>

<p>From what I've read, AP scores don't have a significant impact on admissions. I know a few people who have been accepted into Ivies with so-so AP scores. SAT and GPA are much more important!</p>

<p>(and I think Vicky said it best: they are just "icing on the cake")</p>