Colleges That Request AP Scores on Their Application Forms

[doubleplay]

Perhaps it is more acceptable to NOT take all the AP tests if you come from the school of hard knocks. If I were a low income student who could not afford the AP tests, I'd certainly say something about it in the "anything else you want to say for yourself?" box.

This is a question for adcoms...if you're looking at an application from a student who is obviously low income/hard knocks (I'm assuming this may be quite obvious from his school/background/essay/request for financial aid/etc.), would you be more lenient about him not taking the AP tests?

Conversely, if it's a student who obviously grew up with a gold spoon in his mouth (gone to the finest boarding schools, trips abroad, expensive summer programs all on his folks' dime make this obvious), are you more likely to look askance if he did not take any AP tests to go along with his AP classes?

[marite]

calmom makes a good point.
Unfortunately, this is not the only area in life where the deck is stacked against those with limited income. Given, however, the widespread suspicion that some courses that are labeled APs are either not really up to snuff or sometimes downright bogus, more and more colleges are clamoring for validation. Here's is a thread started by Tokenadult:

Harvard's Fitzsimmons on transcripts: "what you see is often not what you get"

Doubleplay: Some schools just do not offer APs; some that do waive the fees for low SES students. I know ours does.

[calmom]

Originally Posted by doubleplay

Perhaps it is more acceptable to NOT take all the AP tests if you come from the school of hard knocks.

The AP tests are NOT required for college admissions. Even the Harvard application that asks for them begins by stating that they are NOT required. Why should any student have to justify the fact that they didn't do something that the college didn't require?

Originally Posted by doubleplay

If I were a low income student who could not afford the AP tests, I'd certainly say something about it in the "anything else you want to say for yourself?" box.

What about all the middle class students who can't afford it? I am talking about the median income kids whose parents earn around $50-$60K each year and who don't have that sort of extra money to throw around.

I'm not kidding, I'm in that income bracket and when my daughter came home her senior year wanting money for 4 AP tests I balked -- I told her I could pay for 2, not 4. She told me that the school required that she take the AP test for every AP class on her schedule. I told her it was a public school, that they could not require us to pay anything for school services, and to go back and tell her GC or principal that mom wouldn't pay. It ended up that there were some funds available from the PTA or some other source to subsidize the cost, so my d. took the tests for a reduced cost -- but the point is... $85 is a lot of money.

And what kind of supposed "need blind" system is it that forces kids to disclose on their applications the reasons they didn't do something that the colleges explicitly state isn't required in the first place?

And how is a kid supposed to know that they need to be explaining why they didn't do what wasn't required on their applications, in any case?

[doubleplay]

I was just going on what previous posters had said about some schools *looking* at whether or not you took the APs.

An admissions counselor at one school we were looking into said that anything reported on the application (AP scores) would be taken into consideration. The same application point blank asked what your AP scores were, under the "scores" portion.

[marite]

No college requires that applicants have taken APs. The problem comes when applicants claim they have taken AP classes but have not taken the exam. It used to be that colleges trusted AP classes to be AP classes. It seems to be less and less the case. So this is why I believe that AP exams will be increasingly seen as validating. This is precisely the drift of Fitzsimmons' remarks. He is not only Dean of Admissions at Harvard but he also sits on the CB Board.

Distrust of the worth of AP classes is not new. See

Whither Advanced Placement?
William Lichten
Yale University
Education Policy Analysis Archives
Volume 8 Number 29, June 24, 2000, ISSN 1068-2341
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n29.html

[calmom]

Applicants don't "claim" they have taken AP classes - they enroll in the courses at their high schools and it is reported on their transcripts. The issue that the colleges are interested in is whether the student has taken the most challenging courses available at their high schools -- not the comparative quality of the course work. If it was a matter of comparing quality of coursework, then the elite schools could simply go back to the days when they only took students coming from prestigious feeder schools -- and forget the kids coming from typical public schools entirely.

In the same vein, the AP score may not reflect the student's ability but rather the nature & scope of the course they had. This doesn't necessarily mean that their course work was poor or unchallenging- it could be a matter of an AP teacher who simply fails to cover something that is on the test while going more in depth on other topics. My daughter did not take AP English Language in 11th grade because of her semester abroad; instead she worked out an arrangement with a different English lit teacher to self-study for the year, and she spent the year reading various works of American literature while her classmates in AP English Language focused mostly on writing and analytical skills. At the urging of her teachers, she decided to take the AP exam, and prepared by getting a review book and spending an hour going over the vocabulary and sample multiple choice questions, the night before the exam. She did better on the exam than the kids in the formal AP class because of that brief review session -- it wasn't a matter of the *academic* weakness of the course, it was simply that those kids did not get prepped well for the multiple choice part of the exam. (Yes, of course they should have been taught that material - but it wasn't difficult stuff; it is very likely that the AP teacher did include it all within the course, but simply did not give her students an appropriate pre-exam review session).

So the bottom line is that the AP score doesn't tell much about either the quality of the underlying course or the quality of the student.

And... as I've now noted several times .. Harvard (and other colleges) tell their applicants that they do not require the AP exams.

If they want to see them, then they should say so - it would be simple enough to tell students that they will not acknowledge AP's or weighted grades unless there are AP scores to go along with the courses reflected on the transcript.

[mimk6]

I think there is a difference between not taking an AP exam and taking it and not reporting a low score. The score has some correlation to how well the student was able to handle a college level course. It should be an indicator as to how a student will perform in a challenging environment. That said, one big difference between the AP exam and the SAT is that student performance on an AP exam has a lot to do with the quality of teaching the student received. For example, in one class (AP Chemistry) my son's teacher was on maternity leave for a few months this year. The subsitute wasn't at the same level as the teacher and I'd bet money that the scores of the group were lower than the class that had her last year without a break. One year, the school took a big hit faculty-wise in a certain department and so did the AP scores. A student can self study, but in certain courses, particularly certain science classes, it's going to be hard to make up for deficient teaching. Also, colleges receive all the AP scores in the end -- true, the student is admitted but they will see it in the end.

[calmom]

Actually, the submission of AP scores is optional when the student matriculates, and students will only submit if they are going to benefit from the scores -- that is, if their schools award credit or advanced placement based on the tests they have taken. As far as I can tell, Harvard gives AP credit only for scores of 5, and does not recognize AP for all courses -- a student with 4's on all the exams which Harvard recognizes would not qualify for AP and would have no reason to submit the scores. Having all 4's is not bad, especially coming from a weaker high school -- so it is not inconceivable that a kid who qualifies for admission to Harvard would still not have accumulated the right combination of scores and would never submit them.

[Chedva]

I have to agree with calmom on this one - reporting scores is optional. Just as happens at "SAT optional" schools, the students with the strong scores report them and the ones with weaker scores (or no scores) don't.

Schools do not accept a student's word for their SAT I, SAT II or ACT scores. They do not accept a student's word for the courses they've taken or for the grades they've received. Yet they accept the student's word on for their AP scores, and consider them important in the admissions process? I don't think so; it just doesn't make sense to me. They're already asking students to provide other official score reports. If the AP scores were important, they'd simply ask for an official AP score report of exams taken before senior year.

Not only is the submission of scores optional once matriculated, but any scores sent go only to that school. You could lie like a rug about AP scores, get into a particular school, and if you're not going there, the school will never know.

Additionally, students can withhold AP scores from their reports (for a fee, of course). So if the Harvard admittee gets 2 5s, a 4 and a 1, and reported only the 5s on the app, he or she can send only the 5s.

[marite]

Of course reporting scores is optional. And adcoms are free to interpret what is reported and not reported, and the labeling of courses as they wish. If you want to have the greatest possible chance of admission at some of the hardest to get into colleges, you make the strongest possible case. Nobody forces anybody to report scores, but then nobody forces anybody to apply to specific colleges that are known to have very tough criteria for admission.
Simple as that. I don't see that there is much to argue about.

EDIT: Thanks to Asteriskea for starting a new thread on the CB's audit of AP scores. It put the relationship between scores and AP courses into perspective.
For the record, I am no fan of either the AP courses or AP exams. It just so happens that at many schools, these are the most challenging courses available to students who do not want to snooze their way through 3-4 years of high school. Like most tests, AP exams favor certain types of students and certain types of preparation. And given the incredible variation among courses that are labeled APs (by the schools, not the CB), the exams, flawed as they are, are a validating tool (just as the SAT is, another flawed test in my opinion).

[mimk6]

You are right that sending AP scores is optional -- but if you want to send one, don't they all get sent?

[MaryBeth Kravets]

Reporting AP scores is optional and students can elect to do this or not. The real use of AP scores is for college credit and the AP scores are not released automatically along with SAT reasoning tests and SAT Subject Tests.

[Chedva]

All AP scores are sent unless the student requests that the scores be withheld:

You may have one or more grades withheld from the report sent to the college you indicated on your answer sheet. To have a grade withheld from the indicated college, AP Services must receive your written, signed request by June 15 accompanied by a $10 fee per grade, per college. If your request is not received by June 15, the grade is automatically sent to the college indicated on your answer sheet.

The grade will be withheld from any future grade reports sent to that particular college. You may later release the grade to that college by sending AP Services a signed written request.

If you later decide to send an AP Grade Report to a different college, however, you need to contact AP Services to have the grade withheld from that grade report.

A request to withhold a grade does not permanently delete your grade, and all exam grades, even those withheld from grade reports sent to colleges, are sent to you and your school.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/...exgrd_rep.html

[calmom]

If you want to have the greatest possible chance of admission at some of the hardest to get into colleges, you make the strongest possible case.

Exactly, and making the strongest possible case means highlighting and reporting your strengths -- not weak spots in areas where reporting is not mandatory. My point has been all along that since reporting AP scores is entirely optional, it is not "dishonest" for the student to mention only the highest scores.

Obviously if the student has a transcript that shows 5 AP courses taken during 11th grade, and they report scores from only 2 of those classes -- the ad com can draw any inference it wants, just as it can draw whatever conclusions it wants from a student's submission of ACT scores without SAT scores, or non-submission of test scores at a test-optional school. That is, if a student elects to report 2 scores, a 4 and a 5 ... and no mention is made of other scores... then the ad com can reasonably conclude that the student either did not sit for the other exams or scored 3 or below.

But it is not "dishonest" to report only the best, most compelling information in any context where the information is optional in the first place. (Which is what tokenadult reported in post #4 as being said on another thread in this forum, purportedly coming from a presentation by an ad com).

[garland]

Calmom, I agree.

It sounds to me, also, that the acquisition of 5s seems to hold more interest to the posters on this thread than it seems to for many schools,according to what the schools themselves say (which was our experience.)