At our HS, kids in the 6% Auto Admit race for admittance into UT Austin are all taking 5-7 APS a year Jr and Sr year… take them or be out of the running.
@SATXMom2 , is it weighted Gpa? Do all the kids in TX have to take the AP or is the cluster so tight at the top at your school that the APs are a must?
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That’s not how it works here. Only IB HL courses are considered equivalent to AP and since IB is a 2 year sequence only the second half of the sequence (the grade 12 credit) is eligible for transfer credit. Generally IB students have 3-4 courses out of your list that would be considered equivalent to an AP course. The rest are either on level with Pre-AP or Honours.
IB SL classes are one year at our school and most kids take the AP test too so they can get credit.
Palm Beach County Florida, totally normal. Kids can take 2 AP freshman year and it’s a free for all after that. My daughter will probably have a combo of 14 AP/AICE when she graduates. Lots of kids will have more plus dual enrollment during the summer which she doesn’t do. It’s a rat race if you want to get into UF.
UF scattegrams suggest a near 100% acceptance rate for an A- UW GPA combined with 75th percentile scores. Why would kids feel like they need 14+ APs for UF?
One of my sons did full IB in a selective admit program. For the SL exams, he took the equivalent AP exam since he knew colleges wouldn’t give credit for SL scores. The teachers expanded the courses to cover both AP and IB objectives. Freshman year, they took AP Gov’t taught in the IB method to help them get used to the expectations. Wound up with 11 APs and 6 IBs. He took the SL Math Studies exam, but also took AP Calc AP and AP Stat. Took SL Econ and AP Micro and Macro exams.
The kids in the IB program tended to take a lot of AP exams as a way to hedge against IB scores that wouldn’t get them college credit. For my son, AP got him as much/more credit than IB. OTOH, the IB education was far better, in his opinion. As a parent, I was really unhappy with the insanity of double testing and the pressure which this particular program placed on its students.
My other son took 8 APs and then took a bunch of post-AP classes in things that interested him (CS/math).
One of my nieces took 13 APs, entered her flagship as a junior and graduated with four majors, BA and BS. She liked the flexibility she had to explore different subject areas, and the credit gave her schedule space to do so.
My feeling is that 6-7 AP exams is plenty to show a college that one is capable of high-level work, esp if one takes exams across a variety of subject areas. It’s unfortunate that kids feel pressured to take so many APs because they believe (with some justification) that’s how the admissions game is played.
The reality is that many colleges limit the number of AP/IB credits that can be applied towards a degree. For one of my sons, the limit was six; for the other, it was five. Some of the exams could be used instead for placement in a higher level course, instead of credit. State universities tend to be much more generous in granting AP/IB credit/placement.
“Anything beyond 8 to 10 APs is overkill.”
Coach at Ds top 10 Uni stated D had to have at least 10 APs, 4.0 and 34+ ACT to get ED most likely approved. Since then teams admission criteria have gone up.
What’s frustrating for me is that the IB SL classes at our school are often combined with the AP. If you’re doing HL, it’s another year beyond. But the rigor of SL is identical to the AP, but few college recognize the SL exam. We don’t have my daughter’s AP results, but she found the AP exams for Econ to be extremely easy compared to the SL exam. As so few schools give credit for SL, it also encouraged my daughter to take too many HL exams, IMO. May her senior year is going to be horrific.
The average recalculated GPA at UF is around a 4.6. One of the most important things they say they look for is rigor. Did you take the most rigorous schedule that was available to you? All I can tell you is how it’s done at our school and other close by schools. 12+ is typical
She should take 3 Hls. Adcoms will not think ‘super extra rigorous’ if she takes 4 and what matters is a 36+ (38+ if aiming top 20) NOT whether they were 3 HLs and 3 SLs or 4+2…
IB automatically gets the most rigorous check mark btw. So, no need to overdo it, even for top 20s.
Current freshman here, I plan on taking over 12 APs. One this year (Calc AB)…five next year, and then 4 ish each year for junior and senior year
^ BAD plan.
Your number needs to increase progressively.
So, 2 Sophomore year, 3 junior year, 4 senior year would be a good progression. Or 2-3, 3-4, 4-5.
Post AP classes count in the total.
And core classes (foreign language, history, bio/chem/Physics) count more, even if non AP, than non core APs (environmental science, statistics, CS…
@Darcy123 my daughter aced the two AP Econ exams after taking SL Econ. It is ridiculous colleges don’t give credit for SL.
At large public schools where AP is the top level offered and is more rigorous than other classes,I think it would be pretty common to have 8 to 12. Prep schools generally don’t load up on AP courses, and offer their own courses instead.
@MYOS1634 Well three of them next year are online. The ones junior and senior year will be at school.
Why would you need to take online courses your sophomore year? You have already maxed out on your school’s offerings? Just a tip, colleges aren’t really impressed with self study AP courses.
It entirely depends on the student. Some students have to study endlessly to do well while others don’t because the material comes easy. Therefore there is no easy answer. My graduating senior took 12 or so only choosing courses they liked instead of taking them for the sake of an AP credit for admission purposes. The most important thing is not to take an ap in a subject you dislike and do not get so far ahead your schedule decreases in rigor.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Let’s move on from evaluating a specific student’s AP plan and offering alternatives; that’s not the purpose of this thread. Those students/parents who want critique on specific schedules should start en new discussion instead of derailing the conversation here.
The CDS lists an average re-calculated GPA of 4.4. As I understand the recalculation, a student would achieve near this GPA if they took all honors (no APs) core classes and received almost all grades of A- or better. It does imply that a large portion of admitted students are taking a non-zero amount of AB/IB/DE/AICE courses, but it by no means implies you need anything approaching 12 APs. The decision threads on this forum suggest the same idea. The overwhelming majority of decision thread posters were accepted, regardless of how many APs they took. I saw no clear correlation between number of APs and admission decisions.