<p>Just wondering if we can bring our data together to figure out which colleges are good at granting course credit for the AP's taken in HS.</p>
<p>When my son took AP's in HS we never really thought out that far ahead (in terms of college admissions). We let him decide.</p>
<p>Now looking back I see that perhaps that we should have thought more deeply in terms of his GPA, especially Junior/Senior year. In most of his AP classes he stayed in the B+ range, sometimes he got a B and few times C's. His GPA suffered but his mantra was 'I am learning, I don't care about grades!' </p>
<p>His GPA did suffer because of all the AP's he took, and the B and C's he got. In our school they do not give any weight to Honors courses and AP gets only 0.5 extra. He did well in the AP exams though and he finally made it to a very good college (USC).</p>
<p>Now coming to the point of this thread - of all the AP's he took (10) he got credit for ..............1!! He is in engineering. He got placed in higher classes in Math but AP Econ micro/macro and AP Eng Lang/Lit etc were of no use (this is where his GPA had gone down).</p>
<p>I hope I am not starting a controversy here, I am just trying to figure out if there is some sort of helpful info we can provide to others. Had I known this I would have at least told S1 to avoid AP's in subjects that were not totally up his alley. </p>
<p>It would have been nice to see him graduate early and save a few bucks!! :)</p>
<p>Colleges vary in what they will give credit for – I was surprised the other way. My daughter had taken the AP English Comp exam and scored a 4, even though she didn’t take AP English that year – the next year she was in AP English Lit and having conflicts with the teacher, and wanted to drop the course. They wouldn’t let her, plus they insisted that she was obligated to take the exam. I was sure that no college would give her English credit twice— so I thought it was a waste and let the school have a piece of my mind. Well… I was wrong – my daughter’s college ended up giving her the equivalent of 2 courses worth of credit-- in fact, she entered with close to a full semester’s worth of credit because of her AP’s. She also took AP US History without taking the AP course, and she took the AP psych exam after only a single semester of psychology. So she got the benefit of the exams-- and credit – even without having to take the complete courses in high school.</p>
<p>On the other hand, her school had some odd rule about AP Econ, and she couldn’t get credit unless she also passed an exam administered by the department. She never got around to taking the exam, so she never got the credit. </p>
<p>I can see why you are disappointed, but the problem is that when taking these classes, the student generally doesn’t know where they will be going to school. My son ended up at LAC that was very stingy with AP credit and wouldn’t award it the freshman year anyway – but he ended up transferring. So even though the AP courses were of no use at school #1, they came in very handy years down the line at school #2, which had a whole different set of general ed requirements than the first school. So in that case, the APs saved him at least a semester’s worth of catch up work.</p>
<p>I actually think your son had the right attitude in high school – he was taking courses for the content and not for the grade. Your son got into an excellent college despite weaknesses in his GPA – so I am thinking that even if his high school didn’t weight, the colleges did, or at least they were impressed by his courseload. So it may be that without the AP’s, your son wouldn’t have been able to get into as selective a college. </p>
<p>Also – what were your son’s scores? I know many public colleges will give credit for a score of 3 or above, but most selective private colleges only give credit for AP scores of 4 or 5 .</p>
<p>He had mainly all 5’s, except Lit and Macro he had 4. Goes to show - those were his weaker subjects.</p>
<p>I totally agree, in our case it all worked out. I would have liked to see the above 2-3 AP’s off his list with a higher GPA, but hey, you never know!! </p>
<p>As a parent I had a stressful 2 years, must say.</p>
<p>My dd’s top 20 LAC gave her 16 credits for 4 APs. Her school only gives credit for a score of 5, but she got 6 credits for Calculus, and 4 for Chemistry.</p>
<p>Did you know the AP policy at your son’s college before he started there?</p>
<p>My son was pleasantly surprised with the 65 credits that his university gave him for 13 APs. He began his freshman year with junior status. That helped him select his housing and future semesters classes much earlier than many of his friends. He took many of his AP classes just because he found them interesting. Ironically, his AP econ classes were so good that he decided to make econ one of his majors.</p>
<p>My daughter’s French teacher said that less than half the AP class actually takes the AP exam, because by then they know where they are going to school and often determine that the test won’t benefit them. That actually inspired me to go and check the credits awarded by the schools on my daughter’s list (she is applying to five) and saw that there is a great variation. One school would give so many credits and so much forgiveness of otherwise-required general education requirements that if she winds up going there, she might decide to self-study for some exams where she didn’t take the AP course. Other schools–not so much. She has only taken one AP course so far and is enrolled in three (I think?) right now. (Back in my day there weren’t so many AP classes and it never occurred to me she was supposed to load up on as many as would fit in her schedule…so she didn’t.)</p>
<p>I think taking the courses–because the student is interested in the topic, because the most inspiring classmates are attracted to those classes, because the kid wants a challenge and because top schools ALWAYS say they want to see that you challenged yourself in high school–is worth it. Taking them with an eye towards amassing credits might not work out to be. (How much do those tests cost?)</p>
<p>I myself decided not to take the AP history exam 30 years ago, because I it wasn’t going to make any difference to me at the college I was attending.</p>
<p>My S got 22 credits for the 7 AP’s he took. He got nothing for his 3 in AP comp. but got six credits for his 5 in APUSH. His advisor was able to get him credit for his 5 in APES even though his science related major did not actually require ES. He went to a big public univ.
S did ROTC in college which requires a three credit hr. class every sem. in addition to academic requirements for major. S took eighteen or nineteen credit hours (took twenty one sem) almost every sem. He would not have been able to graduate in four years if not for his AP credits.</p>
<p>In our case it was IB. We were completely surprised when D showed up with 16 extra credits on her transcript for 2 HL IB courses in which she received a 6 or 7. The courses are two-year-long but we had no idea she would receive 2 semesters of credit for each. As those total credits are the equivalent to an average semester worth, she now has the intention of fitting extra classes into each semester and doing some summer courses in order to graduate a year early. It also makes her wish that she had gone the extra mile studying for a third HL course at a time when she thought the exams didn’t matter much.</p>
<p>How schools handled AP credit was one of the items on D’s college checklist. If they didn’t give credit or at least placement, well, that didn’t cross them off the list but it certainly ranked them lower. She ended up entering with 25 credits as a freshman after taking 6 AP classes in high school.</p>
<p>She chose to take the AP classes because she was a strong student, she wanted to be with other strong students & she wanted the “best” teachers. The fact that she ended up with so many credits was icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Our situation ended up being a bit weird…didn’t look at the AP credit lists prior to acceptances…and didn’t even realize until after our daughter chose her school (on April 30th at 12:00 midnight) that between the two schools she was choosing between, one was giving her 23 credits for her AP tests and the other would have given her zero (other than elective credit)…</p>
<p>yes, she ended up attending the one that gave her 23 credits…with all “4”'s on the tests…</p>
<p>she is probably not graduating early but this has allowed her to tailor-make her schedule all four years to really take what she wanted to…</p>
<p>We did the same as RobD. AP/IB credit was a criteria on our spreadsheet during the search. However, our son’s choice to take five AP/IB classes per year was more based on his desire to be in classes with other students who really want to learn. In a large public high school in the middle of nowhere, that makes all the difference in the world in terms of discipline in class and the amount of material covered.</p>
<p>At his extreme reach, he MAY get credit for AP Government and IB Literature. At his match and safety, he could enter as a sophomore if he does well on the test this spring.</p>
<p>No, not surprised at all. My son got 5’s on all his APs and credit for every single one of them at Carnegie Mellon (even Latin since the language question has come up). I’m pretty sure he’d have gotten the same number of credits at Harvard too - though I did not look to see whether he’d get out of any of the Core requirements. It’s made college very enjoyable for him since he had hardly any distribution requirements left to fulfill and he was able to jump right into advanced courses. The info was easy to find ahead of time on their website. With careful planning he probably could have gotten a Masters in four years, but he didn’t want the research focus of a Masters and he didn’t want to graduate early as there are still plenty of advance computer science courses that interest him.</p>
<p>Younger son also gets credit for most of his APs though the Tufts course catalog and requirements are much more confusing I think than those at Carnegie Mellon. He won’t be using them to graduate early, but it may make it easier to spend a junior year abroad because he’ll have a little more flexibility.</p>
<p>I just wanted to mention that USC *does give credit *for APs with a score of 4 or 5, but in most cases it is elective credit, not direct course credit. USC will grant credit for and wave courses for foreign language, science and a few others, but pixeljig’s son is in a major that has a stiffer science requirement.</p>
<p>My daughter entered USC with 9 APs and was granted *a full year of credit<a href=“32%20units”>/I</a>, but ALL of it was elective credit - no direct course credit. So the real benefit is that she gets some registration priority and was able to take upper-division courses her second semester of freshman year.</p>
<p>She received credit evaluations at the two UCs to which she was accepted, and they granted her in excess of a full year of credit with several direct course credits for general education courses - VERY generous. She likely could easily have graduated in three years. She chose USC because of the Thematic Option honors program and the availability of a Cinema/TV minor.</p>
<p>I have seen many kids go through the AP credit dance and been surprised by the outcomes. It doesn’t cross many of the seniors minds to even investigate what the policy is for the colleges they hope to attend. It’s usually fairly easy to determine for a college by a simple search on the college website. It may not be definitive, though, depending upon major. </p>
<p>My engineering S got no credit at the school he attended. He would have, at two of the other schools he applied to, though.</p>
<p>Another S got no AP at the school he attended for his major, either, but got waived out of several basic math and English classes from his SAT and SAT II tests. </p>
<p>It can be a huge timesaver and help with the family’s budget, but I don’t think it’s even on the radar of many of these kids until they have already applied.</p>
<p>It’s definitely good you have brought it up. There have been threads about it, before, but it never hurts to remind current juniors and seniors to research this policy. It could go a long way to improving their cost of attendance.</p>
<p>I think DD took 7 AP tests and got credit freshman year for 6 of them, 4 that counted in areas that were helpful in meeting pre-requisites or distribution requirements (BC calc, physics B, one of the two econs, and gov) and 2 that only counted for elective credit (second econ and world history). Scores were 4’s or 5’s. U Texas. (They also gave her three credits for freshman English for the writing component of her SAT score and three credits for pre-calc for her Math 2 SAT II subject test.)</p>
<p>My D. has used her AP’s very carefully. She used both AP US History and AP English to skip classes that she was not interested to take. However, she did not skip any Bio, despite of AP Bio (“5” on exam). She said that if she would, she would not be able to be successful in next Bio classes. Her very first Bio was way harder than AP Bio and made good number of Honors kids change their professional plans.<br>
There is not general rule. Evaluate your own situation based on your set of AP’s, major and difficulty level of class first semester.</p>
<p>My son’s college did give him a lot of AP credit (he had 4’s and 5’s in all of them). But these were some areas that didn’t help - he is an engineering major and had credit for Physics B which didn’t help him, he also took AP Lang and AP Lit but the college only gave credit for one of them, He took AP Econ Macro but needed Macro and Micro to get credit. He was given credit for a year of Chem but chose to only take a semester worth of credit. Right now he’s planning on majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Econ so his AP credits will free up space to do that.</p>
<p>Another factor to consider…my college freshman was grumbling about being one of the last kids to register for spring classes. What he learned was that part of the timing is based on the number of credits you have and those with more AP credits get bumped up the line.</p>
<p>^
At my alma marter, sophomores actually had the lowest registration priority, so kids that came in with enough AP credits to give them sophomore status were actually hurt for the 1-2 registration cycles.</p>
<p>I received 59 AP credits (13 tests) plus another 4 for college class I took one summer in high school, so I came in with junior standing. I used them to fulfill general ed requirements and extradepartmental requirements for my major (social work, which required, among other things, intro to econ, bio, government, and psych, all of which I had AP credit for). The only two subjects in which I used my AP credits to skip ahead were psych (major) and bio (minor). I ended up fulfilling all but two gen eds, so it really freed up my schedule and allowed me to double major and minor. The only downside was having to pay the “senior” surcharge for 3 years.</p>