Aah. Can’t imagine not sending a 4. Agree with you.
But MIT is a bad example. Since physics is part of the General Institute Requirements (i.e. the core) EVERYONE takes physics. If you took two years of HS physics, you are STILL taking physics once you get to college- just not the same section as someone who has never taken physics before.
Different AP courses / tests would be different in this respect. AP human geography seems to be a very easy course / test, more like what would be 9th grade level honors course (which is how some high schools use it). Perhaps that is why getting subject credit or advanced placement in college for it is uncommon. But colleges are more likely to give subject credit or advanced placement for AP scores in subjects like calculus and foreign languages.
There are also some subjects where the introductory level course is suitable for either college or high school students. AP CS principles and similar college courses would be an example.
So odd . . . that would just lend to the assumption that if a kid is not submitting it is because their score is definitely below 1500. They are clearly trying to boost their profile because data for their school shows that 1500 is on the high side for them so why discourage submission? Their common data set for 22-23 for ENROLLED kids (we don’t know about admitted) shows that their scores are 1400 (25th percentile), 1450 (50th), 1500 (75th%). For ACT, those numbers are 31-32-33. Only 16% of enrolled students submitted SAT scores (293 kids) and 34% submitted ACT scores (620 kids, and remember, there is overlap here so we cannot assume that 50% submitted scores). You can do the math, but very few kids are actually scoring above 1500 that are enrolled at Tulane.
I guess we’ll what the CDS says for 23-24. We thought it was odd when he said it, too.
1448 is their average score for enrolled students. To the extent that some # of students use Tulane as a safety and/or decide to attend a more selective school, the scores of admitted students will be higher than those of enrolled students. Tulane is not alone in this. Much narrower range at say HYPS than Tulane, etc.
I heard last year that Northeastern used a similarly high score as their ‘Do not submit below xxx’ threshold. Seems to be part of the race to USNWR rankings.
It would be useful if there were one format for high school profiles. I have collected dozens of these through the years while attempting to help families and friends with college admissions. I have yet to see the exact same info reported by two schools. The profiles range from excellent and informative to marketing fluff with more space dedicated to listing college acceptances from past three years than AP scores and GPA distribution of the current year’s class.
Yeah, as I understand it, the short list at our HS (the Calcs, modern languages, and CS) is because all those actually map reasonably well on to the college equivalent. I gather they do teach more material than the test, but at least most of what they would be teaching for the test does have to be covered anyway.
It’s clear that top privates that don’t offer many APs – typical at such schools – will be well-known to admissions offices. I took this to mean they are concerned when large suburban publics have 22 valedictorians and they need some other differentiator, particularly when some are not submitting SAT/ACT scores.
It’s not uncommon for schools with high AP results to include those on the school profiles they share with college reps. At my son’s school these results are prominently featured.
No HS needs to follow the AP curriculum to offer rigor to 9th or 10th graders, or really to 11th/12th graders. At many HSs, the AP courses aren’t close to being college level. At some point the board and/or superintendent have to be the adults in the room.
Yes, this is an important part of our school profile as well. Last year we had 46% of the student body taking AP exams, with 98% of exams receiving a 3 or above score. It allows the school to say right there, bright as day, that we have high rigor, College Board says so. The student can say I have a high GPA within the high rigor. Mission accomplished.
The state does pay for 1 STEM AP exam per year.
I think APs being reserved for 12th grade with a few in 11th (what I had too) would logically shift to loading up in 10th and 11th, because again “high GPA, high rigor”.
This is the experience of a large suburban HS. It’s larger than many colleges. Of course we also have championship winning athletics, award winning music programs, nationally ranked competitive clubs, and on and on. It’s a machine doing what it’s told.
Yeah, it is obviously possible to provide honors/advanced classes as rigorous or more rigorous than APs. For classes which I think should be more about things like research papers, reflective papers, and class discussions, arguably the AP format is a bad fit.
But how do you actually prove to the more selective colleges that your classes are actually better than APs?
I don’t think it is good that APs appear to be such a common answer to this problem, but I also understand why it is a difficult problem. In the US, your choices for a standardized curriculum with standardized evaluations are down to basically just APs and IBs, and IBs are a real challenge to mesh with a typical K-12 system. So . . . .
If the HS doesn’t offer APs as a normal part of the curriculum, students take it online. It’s probably pretty hard to fight that battle against the type of parents that this type of HS attracts.
Another thing I heard of is some kids here audit non-AP courses like music because there’s no GPA bump and what would normally be an easy A would weight down their GPA. So the class is not on their schedule, but they go during their lunch period. That way they can still say they play whatever instrument in the highest level music class without the GPA hit. The adults in the room allow this. Maybe they think it’s only a few kids and these are the few kids who get into the schools that add to their brag sheet. But while this is a small subset of students, it raises the GPA bar higher and higher. If you want your kid to have a more balanced 4 years of high school, they’ll look relatively worse when it’s college app time. On top of that everyone is lamenting about grade inflation, so that works against them too.
This is where parents have to be the adults in the room. And realize themselves that while their child might look “relatively worse” at college app time - that’s only for a very small subset of highly rejective schools.
There are still plenty of great schools who will happily accept those students not gaming their GPA to the nth degree - with generous merit awards. Just not the tippy top.
Sure, but then where will they take the test? It’s become really difficult for homeschoolers, etc, to find AP test seats at a HS they don’t attend.
I don’t even understand this one, where would that give any benefit to a student in an elective no less?
Agreed! We always say well we have some very unstressed kids! But still this is game that is played out there. The kids themselves care about the brand names too.
Not a problem at our school to take the exam if taken online or as a homeschooler. My son switched to the homeschool version of online school freshman year (2020), vs the all over the place version offered by the HS, and we followed the same curriculum as closely as possible, which included AP Human Geography. I emailed the administrator in charge of AP exams, brought in a check for the fee and he was all good.
For students taking additional APs online, it’s nothing at all. The course has to be approved by the counselor so it’s in their system already.
I suppose for an instrument if you’re one of the first few chairs, it’s something to add?
The issue here is that those past students didn’t have the covid gap in preparation, and, so many schools have subsequently inflated grades as a result of same. The old saw…past performance is not guarantee of future results.
I think the idea is that an unweighted course pulls down the weighted GPA, impacting the student’s apparent rank by decile/quartile (even though the high school may not officially rank). Typically the 6-semester GPA distribution reported on the School Profile is weighted GPA.
Its the same problem as always, but more pronounced. I missed valedictorian in high school because I skipped lunch and took a second choir class (which was unweighted and brought down my GPA). I knew that would happen, and still took the cass anyway.
Gaming the system just keeps going to new lengths. People here do it for the top % auto admission to the state flagship.