Why do people self study AP Exams?

Test Preparation
1

I’ve been reading around this forum and many people say AP scores play little to no role in the admission process. Then what is the point in spending hours to self study throughout the year? And many colleges only take 4s or higher or don’t even give credit for certain courses and still require you to take the class. Like if you are a chemistry major, they would most likely still require you to take chemistry in college. And even if you do get credit, is the extra money you save for 1 class really worth hours of your time? Where that hours of time could have been used to apply to a ton of scholarships and you would save even more money? Can someone enlighten me? :stuck_out_tongue:

2

Credit and placement, perhaps graduating a year earlier. You could obviously do other thing for scholarships and such, but I personally think self studying is a smaller committment. I don’t think I would ever do it of course.

3

How much money do you even save if you are able to skip a class?

4

From most to least common (in my estimation):

  1. Some students have a misguided belief that self-studying is more impressive than taking classes, because they did everything on their own.
  2. Other students have a misguided belief that they need to self-study AP exams to make up for their high school's lack of AP classes.
  3. Like @Frigidcold said, credit and placement. I also used my self-studied AP Calculus BC exam score (my high school didn't offer the class) to fulfill a prerequisite for more advanced math courses I took at a local university when I was in high school. Dual enrollment is free in my state, so I would have done this even without the possibility of college credit.
  4. Non-traditional students (for example, home-schooled students) may take AP exams to demonstrate that their education was rigorous.
  5. Some students want to learn AP material for fun, and see no reason not to take the exams.
  6. Non-US universities sometimes require AP exam scores from US applicants. If an applicant's school doesn't have enough AP courses, they need to self-study.
  7. My high school waived me out of their US government graduation requirement after I self-studied the AP US Government exam.

    Maybe if you’re going to Harvard, but most colleges are pretty generous. If you can self-study well enough to learn the material for a course, you should be able to get a 4. I agree that people shouldn’t self-study unless they have some idea of whether their scores will be accepted for credit.

    If you want to self-study exams for credit or placement, I would recommend focusing on exams that meet general-education requirements rather than major requirements.

    At my private university, a three-credit-hour course costs around fifty times what an AP exam costs. I have a lot of scholarships, but I still prefer to take courses that are more directly related to my interests. There’s also a time benefit to self-studying, because you don’t have to do homework or go to lectures.

    I never had any luck applying to random scholarships. All of my scholarships came directly from my university and didn’t require a separate application.

5

I’ve self studied one AP during High school, Computer Science. I only did it because I like the subject and want to major in it but the class is not at my school. I just did it for the learning experience, it definitely filled in some gaps in my CS/programming knowledge, and signing up for the exam forced me to study in a more structured way and take it more seriously than I would if I didn’t sign up for the exam. (my 5 doesn’t let me skip any course and gives me almost no credits)

anyway, aside from that reason, I’d say another valid reason is to skip general ed reqs through self studying, usually those don’t require 5s - so not as much studying required, so not as much time needed (self studying for a 3 probably won’t waste much time). This is of course highly dependent on which college you go to - where I’m going only AP Lit and AP Calc BC let me skip requirements and I took them as regular courses.

6

But usually people aren’t even sure which college they are going to let alone getting in to. So it’s hard to plan that far ahead and only self study for an AP that you are sure will give you credit in your college.

7

Most people have a tentative list of schools, or at least an idea of the type of school they want. For example, self-studying will probably bring greater rewards at a state flagship than it will at a liberal arts college that places a lot of value on class discussion.