This is not a practical question, but it seems to me that Advanced Placement scores are a much fairer measure of actual academic ability than are high school grades. There’s really no comparison between a fairly rigourously standardized measurement and widely varying high school grades. And yet high school grades (in academic track courses) are very important while AP scores are weighed “1%” if at all, are typically optional, and don’t even need to be submitted.
So a student who gets an ‘A’ in a high school AP class but scores a 3 on the related AP exam … is looking good!
Weird … How do U.S. colleges and universities explain this?
Not everyone can afford to pay and take all of the AP exams. And you only get a single AP score at the end of the year. So for equitability most colleges consider AP scores as optional.
Agreed, also not everyone’s schools offer AP and other schools like mine offer IB, which I won’t even get scores back for until the end of the school year. In that sense they can be used to when comparing two people who had taken all the AP scores, but in general they are not very good to use because so many people can be taking the most rigorous high school courses but still not be able to take the AP exams.
Additionally, not all school offer AP exams. Many highly selective HS’s have eliminated them because they refuse to teach to the test. And many HS’s in lower SES areas simply can’t afford to offer these classes.
Plus AP exams are a one-shot deal and a lot of factors can affect how well a student does on that single day. Some students are sitting for six or eight or more AP exams in a single cycle; they have to parcel their study time among many exams and might “only” manage mostly 3s despite deserving their A course grades. Some students are forced by parents or pressured by teachers to take the AP exams even if they don’t want to, and their AP score isn’t a true reflection of their ability. Some students may be sick or anxious. Some AP teachers do a great job preparing their students for college but just don’t teach specifically to the exams. There are many reasons for an A course grade to lead to a 3 (or lower) AP exam grade. Colleges know this and don’t weight a single exam over an entire course.
Everything we provide to admissions offices is affected by money and affordability. I’m just saying that an AP score, as a standardized measure, is a more accurate and much more reliable reflection of actual ability in, say, U.S. History, than is a grade in a high school U.S. History class. Since the actual level of academic ability, whether achieved unfairly or not, should be more important to college admissions offices than just the level of ability compared to the other people in one high school class (which is what a grade reflects), it’s strange how undervalued AP scores are.
Of course it isn’t perfect and will be unfair to those who were sick on the day of the test and so on. But those are fairly minor weak points compared to not knowing how to compare students who take radically different courses, with very different levels of difficulty, that only seem the same because they are all called, say, U.S. History.
IMHO it’s because grades over 3+ years can give a college a good look at an applicant’s abilities. It’s pretty hard to BS straight As for 3+ years, whereas it is POSSIBLE to just cram really hard for an AP Test, get a passing grade then have a total brain dump.
Mainly because AP courses and tests are not universally offered to or taken by college-bound high school students, and those who do take AP courses and tests may not necessarily take the same ones.
However, if it is true that A students in your high school’s AP course tend to get low scores on the associated AP test, there is probably some inadequacy in how your high school teaches that AP course.
On admissions visits with my daughter, as I have listened to admissions officers and Honors College admissions people, as they extolled the virtues of high GPAs and test scores, I have wondered why they don’t value AP test scores more. If they are placing such a high priority on the SAT or ACT, which is taken on one day, then why not the AP exams? Why do they place such a high value on GPA? An A in an AP US History class in one high school may have taken less work from a less demanding teacher or with the opportunity for alot of extra credit points then the B earned at another high school. What if the student who earned the A in the APUSH course scored a 3 on the AP exam and the B student earned a 5? I think the AP exam would be more of an apples to apples comparison. I agree,AP exam scores should be added into the admissions decision information when available.
And, also, AP teachers should be teaching to the test. The courses are designed to cover certain subject matter and teachers have a huge amount of resources available to them to teach the AP material. My children have been blessed with extraordinary AP teachers. My son said those courses (10) gave him an excellent foundation for college.
Students who take “regular” courses are sometimes grouped for projects; there is a division of labor. The team has to present a topic and earn a grade while working cooperatively.
Job prospects want students who know and can work independently and in group settings. Groups work is presented throughout the high school years and is part of the coursework. The GPA can reflect that group work in biology labs, physics labs, english classes, history and art classes, etc.
When you have a low GPA, it is very telling.
If you only want to be judged by AP scores then something is going on, and the colleges will want to know what and why.
I think that AP scores say something but not everything about a student. Each piece of information on an application tells the college something but no one piece of information tells the entire story. I think that is how AP scores are treated. My kids come from a state which is considered somewhat backwards educationally (FL). Even though they attend a well regarded private college prep school kids from FL are often viewed with skepticism. For my kids the high AP scores are probably viewed as validation of their high grades where a kid from one of the NE boarding schools grades are taken at face value whether they have AP scores or not.
As an applicant students should think abut what their AP scores say about them to adcoms and include or withhold them depending on whether they think the AP scores help. I think adcoms do consider AP exam scores but they don’t consider them in a vacuum.
AP scores are weighed "1%" if at all, are typically optional, and don't even need to be submitted. <<
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but is it possible that NOT reporting AP scores can hurt you more than reporting them will help you?
if a college sees that you took 8 AP courses but did not report any scores, could they assume you bombed them and downgrade your application? but if you share them, they nod and give you that 1% boost?
in other words the real value may not be the actual boost they give your application, but they protect you against the misguided assumption that you bombed the AP exams.
I’m hearing more and more that some universities are coming to the conclusion that AP classes aren’t preparing students adequately for subsequent university level classes. Seems to be especially true in math and science. And I’ve seen several posts here in CC where students applying to grad school in the sciences had to go back and take 1000 level classes in basic sciences as their AP credit wasn’t acceptable to the grad schools.
You asked a question, and you got responses to your question. The purpose of this thread, and this site, is not to debate the question. College admissions policies are the domain of the college admissions offices, and nothing you say will change that. So if your only purpose in asking the question is to argue the point, I will simply close the thread.
I would also say that more than half of a college bound student’s potential AP exams are taken after college admissions decisions have been made. Since colleges don’t want to have students more stressed out than is the case now, can you imagine if colleges suddenly say we need you to submit all your AP exam scores for tests taken from 9-11th grade. Can you imagine the chaos, confusion and added pressure? For what? Do you think the colleges are having problems admitting anyone?
AP test scores for a student’s senior year will not be available for a college’s admission decision. Generally the bulk of a studentsAP courses will be taken senior year. Colleges will have 7th semester grades from AP courses but not test scores.
@JohnHaba I don’t think its any breakthrough that students who score high on AP generally have more success than those who don’t score high on AP. You can say that with just about any tests. It is also true that people who go to more competitive HS’s will have an easier transition to college than those who don’t, but should colleges simply stop admitting kids because they weren’t financially well off enough to do AP, but did everything they could do make them an amazing application? There are pretty clear reasons as to why colleges can’t have AP tests as a must in their admissions.