<p>I should graduate with either 19, 20, or 21 APs (I don't know about Art History or Physics E&M for sure yet) and so far they are all 5 s.
I'm not super smart or anything, but I am a good test taker and I get a kick out of teaching myself. Yes, I am a little nerdy:)</p>
<p>I would like to make these tests useful for college, if possible. Assuming that I go to a college that grants credit for high scores on most/all AP tests, what are my options? </p>
<p>p.s. I don't want to go too insane over academics in college because I'm a cross-country and track athlete too and that's important to me...</p>
<p>I think I can relate much to you OP. I took and passed 11 AP test and this is my first year in college. So far my experience is that most of my AP didn’t mean jack when it came to my major. But what it does is let you pass most if not all of your gen eds. This was what happened to me and I ended up with two extra years This translates too two years of internships :D</p>
<p>Holy moly girl! Well, take some electives in college maybe - explore your interests. I’m assuming you’ll have many pre-reqs filled. So, you can either take less credits and do fun stuff or you can get started on your major [: Awesome job!</p>
<p>AP credit is usually good for getting out of general education requirements. Like, if you’re an engineering major, you can probably get out of some history classes with AP Euro and AP US. And other stuff that isn’t that important to your major. I think you should definitely take those credits.</p>
<p>Things start to get hairy when you’re thinking about skipping classes in your major. There are many different views on this and none are right or wrong. I heard an advisor say something like, if you could get a 5 on that exam every time you took it, then you can probably skip the class. But really, it’s up to you. </p>
<p>That’s a really impressive amount of AP’s. Great work.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on the school. Here, you can’t use AP units for GE requirements, so they mainly just help your class standing, so you sign up for classes earlier (which is a big benefit).</p>
<p>I think it’s a bad idea to change your plans to try to maximize your AP credit. If you get credit for something, great, now you don’t have to retake it. But don’t try to find the major or college that will give you the most credit and aim for there. </p>
<p>If you’re really looking at trying to maximize its use, go to a college that has no in-house requirements (there was one posed in a thread here very recently, last couple of days) and be a general studies major (or whatever… do general studies). You would probably be able to graduate in a year if you got 4-5 credits for each of those 21 APs.</p>
<p>Hi there,
I had a lot of AP credits going into a big state university that accepted 4’s and 5’s. Although I got the credits, they’re most useless.</p>
<p>Why? Because I needed to explore a wide breadth of courses in fresh/soph years that covered most of the gen ed requirements those AP credits had satisfied. And, for major requirements, I found it REALLY helpful to take the foundations at the university again so you can really nail it down. </p>
<p>Unless you’re in a rush and not planning to explore many options in college (yikes…) I think you’ll find they’re not so helpful.</p>
<p>Wow 21 AP’s??? My high school didnt even have AP or anything like that. just dont try to be one of those smart kids who like to show off and quadruple major because they have so many AP’s comming in. My advice is if you can test into Calc 3, take Calc 2 just to make your gpa high and if you only test into Calc 2, go ahead and take Calc 1. If you test out of Physics 2, go ahead and take it, if not take P1 (physics 1). basically if you test into the higher level, start out a class below it to start out with a strong gpa. you wont be able to take any of your major classes anyway so why not?</p>
<p>I disagree with the statement that you shouldn’t focus what school you should go to get max AP Credit. I think that is a valid question and variable when choosing a college. Here’s my story on why I came to this conclusion.</p>
<p>Ok so we know I took 11 AP test. I had two choices when it came down to colleges. Allegheny College, a private 30k a year liberal arts school, and Utah state, my states flagship school. After multiple phone calls I learned that Allegheny would accept a max of 4 AP test and Utah State would take all 11. I choose Utah State because I poured my heart and soul out senior year to pass 7 AP test. I was not in the mood to know it may have been all for nothing.</p>
<p>Now I’m extremely pleased in my choice, but only because it fit perfectly with my major, which is Political Science. See thanks to AP I tested out of all but 3 Gen eds classes. Because I already passed the intro poli sci courses I got a jump start right into my major. Thanks to the jump start, I am only taking 2 years to get my B.S. and I have an extra two years to do government internships and study aboard. This is going to significantly help me stand out when I apply to Yale Law, which is my ultimate goal.</p>
<p>If I had went with Allegheny though, I would have gone into huge amounts of debt, stay physically four years at a college instead of two, and would not have allowed me to gain essential EC to get into an Ivy school.</p>
<p>Overall I say it depends on your major. If you are a science major it may prove best to retake the University courses to ensure you have the knowledge. But in political science, if you know and love government and politics, you don’t need to retake university courses. Have more fun and jump right into upper division! All the fun people and professors are there.</p>
<p>Hope that gives you a more in depth perspective!</p>
<p>thanks for all of your suggestions!
justintsn- that is very helpful! thank you:)
also, I think I’ve figured out what to do, so no need to comment anymore on this thread…</p>
This translates too two years of internships :D</p>
but congrats!</p>