“Students are using AP credits earned in high school to complete college early, reducing their tuition costs.”
This ended up being one of the factors on my daughter’s pros/cons list. Some of the schools on her list wouldn’t give credit even for 5s on the AP. Others, would take 3s. She is thrilled to be getting out of general ed requirements. She wont necessarily be able to graduate more than a semester early but it will allow her to take more tech electives or out of major courses of her choosing, and have priority in scheduling. It would also allow her the flexibility to co-op and still graduate in 4 years. Definitely a money saver for us.
NYU waived the science requirement after a 5 on the AP Physics test.
S was given six credits at Virginia Tech and waived from history requirements for his 5 on APUSH. These were the only AP credits allowed for him, but they’ll be extremely helpful considering he needs 128 credits to graduate.
My son at UMD entered with 29 allowable credits (one shy of Sophomore status). He used that space to double major in CS and Applied Math and also study a semester abroad. He could have also graduated a year early, but chose to study abroad and do the Gemstone Honors program. So, it didn’t save us, but could have.
My DD used IB credits and a couple summer classes to graduate 1.5 years early.
24 credits plus a summer abroad will knock off a year of undergrad. Saves $$ for grad school
My D could graduate very early with AP credits, but is instead staying to study abroad for a semester, get a dual degree, a minor, and a masters. She had senior standing by spring semester of freshman year. AP credits are great for students who want to do too much in 4 years or those who need to graduate early for financial reasons. I also think they are just good college prep.
My son took good number of AP courses and got 5s in all so he’ll start as a sophmore and after first semester, he’ll have enough credit hours for junior standing. We had no idea AP credits are going to be such big time and money savers. He can graduate early, add another major or two without worrying about payments or scheduling issues, if he wants to.
My kid will have 41.33 semester units of AP along with 41.5 units of CC semester credits so one might think that he’s 2/3 of the way along the road to 120. He got waived out of both Reading/Composition classes and 1 whole year of Calculus, plus the first 2 courses in Biology. Plus his CC classes covered a bunch of breadth and other classes. But it will still take 3 years to graduate. 2.5 years if he decides to single major. The thing is that for upper division courses, you have all these unit minimum requirements, class dependencies, warnings about not combining certain classes, registration issues, and classes that only show up once in a blue moon, so it takes a lot of flexibility, a lot of knowlege in optimization efficiency and some really good planning/luck to actually pull off 2.5 or 3 years.
Re: #9
Yes, the selection of AP courses (and college courses taken while in high school) is often not optimized to fulfill subject requirements and advance in prerequisites for the major and college that the student will attend (often because the major and college are not known at the time those courses were chosen while in high school). So the student may find that much of his/her credit on entrance may only count for general elective credit, not useful subject credit or advanced placement.
My eldest earned 29 credits across a nice array of subjects fulfilling almost all distribution requirements… delighted with the flexibility! Can graduate early or choose more interesting courses within major or a minor.
@ProfessorPlum168, it depends on the major. You could likely potentially graduate in 2 years with some major (those that don’t have long sequences of courses–I’m thinking of history, English, etc.), but 3 would likely be the very bare minimum for majors like engineering or other professional majors that have a bunch of required courses and sequences.
But that’s still savings in cost and flexibility gained.
My son took 12 APs, scored 5 on all, and entered Northwestern as a freshman with sophomore standing, allowing him to graduate in 4 years with a Masters in ChemE. Thank you AP, and thank you teachers and school district that allowed him to take the courses he wanted to.