Thanks. Unweighted gpa is 3.99 and SAT is 1550.
OK. Your in a great position. Your son. Take what feels good and don’t worry. It seems your keeping the rigor up regardless.
Don’t worry about AP chem. It sounds like your kid will be well-prepared both for college admissions, and for college itself.
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Not going to be an issue - provided he has the requisite English, foreign language, social science, etc.
Of course, highly rejective schools are not just about the academics and test.
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You don’t have to trust me, but I have 30 years of teaching and advising high-achieving high school students. The top kids aiming for rejective schools certainly do take AP Chem and do well. Is it possible not to do that and still get in? Sure, but you’re up against people who did it. It’s “possible” to have any combination of anything and still manage to pull off an admission for random reasons. If you want to maximize your chances, make sure you have the chem.
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That might be true based on the subset of students in your orbit, but that’s not true for the entire pool. Just to start with, many high schools limit AP courses (and plenty don’t even offer AP courses)…so it’s not uncommon that students can only access one or two AP lab science classes in their entire HS curriculum (at the schools that offer APs.)
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If my engineering daughter had it to do over again, she’d have taken DE English and gotten credit for it to not have to take it (2 courses) in college. She didn’t enjoy her English courses so would have preferred taking more Chem, math, Physics in college.
She entered college with not one credit or ability to skip an into classes (so Chem 1, Calc 1). She actually liked that. In her Calc 1 class, more than half the class had already taken Calc in hs (she had not) and she spent about 1/2 of her total study time on that class while many others figured it was just a review for them so didn’t put that much time into it. She got the A…
But for your questions, I think the top engineering colleges are looking for strong courses in STEM classes but it looks like your son has those. I’m sure his GC is going to check the most rigorous box
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My son didn’t take AP Chem and is an engineering major at Brown. He focused on AP physics and math in high school, and didn’t take bio or chem. He did have to self-study chem over last summer so he could test into a higher level Chem class that’s required for his particular major, but that was only because he chose to do a study abroad program and he needed to squeeze that Chem class in to stay on track. So no, you don’t need AP chem, but it certainly would have been helpful for him. Our daughter chose not to take it next year because at her school, it’s a notoriously difficult class and she will need to balance a full schedule of APs, sports and college apps in the fall.
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@OP, I guess it depends on how highly rejective is the engineering school. FYI, S24 did not take any AP science class, and he is now attending UC Davis in Aerospace Engineering. UCD is not MIT or Stanford, but he loves there. It also got accepted to other “good” engineering schools such as uDub, TAMU, tOSU and etc. Good Luck.
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I think this is a good point. In fact, I’m not sure I’d have put Brown in the category of “highly rejective engineering program”. Probably my personal list would be: MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princeton. Next tier: Cornell, Georgia Tech, UIUC, U Mich, UCB. None of the other fancy schools (HY etc.) are as good in engineering per se.
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Another consideration for the OP - some very good engineering programs have secondary admission to major. If a student is very far ahead in some subjects, they may need to take a more difficult, higher level course, and some students may have trouble meeting the gpa threshold.
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I think this changes a lot every year at every school. Can the OP talk to specific departments of interest?
Or they feel pressure to waste their advanced placement in order to grade-grub by repeating their AP credit to boost their GPA for secondary admission to major.
However this student seems to have the opportunity to take AP Chemistry so does it matter in that context? I wouldn’t know but I believe students are evaluated in the context of what is available to them. If the student were choosing to major in physics it might not matter or it might be beneficial for the student to pursue more physics but if the student is being evaluated for engineering and the students in the student’s school who also wish to pursue engineering have all taken AP Chemistry while this student pursues more physics, if one were picking between applicants from this school with all else being equal which never happens, would AP Chemistry be seen as more beneficial vs having more physics or the other way or neither? Obviously it would never be as simple as this as there is more to the evaluation such as ec’s etc but taking everything else away the question boils down to whether an engineering major prospective would be better served by having more physics vs taking AP Chemistry?
Given that the student has taken AP Physics 1 and 2 and Physics C, I wonder if the student would benefit from having more breadth in the sciences. For an engineering prospect, taking 14 AP courses but not having one of them be AP Chemistry when it’s available might look like avoidance, especially as it sounds as if the student doesn’t have AP Bio either. I am not an admissions officer or anything of the kind but I personally would favor a student that has shown proficiency at the university level in all the prerequisite subjects. Note that in US it is different, but in countries like Canada for majoring in engineering, you would be required to have calculus, physics and chemistry at the highest level available. If you don’t have all three, you won’t get in for engineering though you could for physics or math. It doesn’t matter if you have partial differential equations and quantum mechanics if you are missing the required top level chemistry (Honors Chemistry wouldn’t count as students are expected to have two years of chemistry and physics so one year doesn’t meet the minimum bar).
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Would love a source. My kid (only one datapoint) did not take AP Chemistry- it conflicted with another non-science class he wanted to take. And since MIT does NOT have “Engineering applicants”-- everyone is just a plain vanilla applicant-- it did not matter. So your statement is absolutely not true for the “schools coveted by CC readers” who do not admit by major.
And at least as far as MIT is concerned- AP Chem covers aproximately the first three weeks of freshman chemistry. And then everyone is on equal footing- working very, very hard to pass a very challenging and fast-paced course which is required of everyone- econ major, poli sci major, and yes- the engineers.
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At MIT, a 5 on the Chemistry AP gives you permission to take their placement exam. The top of those kids do get credit for 5.11 (my source - my DS20 did exactly this). Because the Chemistry AP has become somewhat watered down over the years, a 5 no longer directly gets 5.11 credit, as it did when my DH got it in 1990.
(5.11 is freshman chemistry at MIT, and is indeed a general institute requirement for all students.)
There are plenty of places on the internet that people can get advice blowing optimistic smoke about how they don’t really need x or y or z and schools will all still be within reach. On CC, there is more knowledge and more honesty. Schools like MIT are incredible reaches for every applicant. Even if you have perfect grades and scores and all the STEM advanced classes. Why would someone shoot himself in the foot by refraining from taking a central course, even if outliers might get in without it?
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My point is that these kids (at least at MIT) are NOT outliers. There are many reasons why a kid would skip an AP. There is zero evidence that MIT is racking and stacking (Oooh, Susan has 13 AP’s, she’s clearly got more rigor than Charlie who only has 10). And there is also zero evidence that MIT cares about any single course more than the totality of a kid’s academic experience (that, in fact, is how MIT interprets “holistic”).
We all know MIT and Caltech rejects who are flummoxed that with their “perfect” academic record and every AP known to man they were rejected. It’s because taking every “expected” AP is NOT the route to admissions. And since MIT is well aware that not every HS teaches every AP equally well, using the presence of absence of a particular course as a knock out factor is illogical. AP exams taken senior year won’t show up in time for an admissions decision anyway.
MIT folks are pretty transparent that there is no road map and that gaming their admissions system is most likely a waste of time.
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p.s. I looked it up and I see now that MIT has removed credit for almost all AP exams. My guess is that it is because the scores are not as meaningful now as they were. So in fact this potentially makes my argument stronger, that an AP 5 is even a lower bar for applicants at this level.
MIT conducts longitudinal analysis on its students (surprise, surprise). And perhaps they’ve removed the credit option because they have actual data that shows that taking AP Chemistry is NOT predictive of doing well in engineering. So the data might show the opposite of what you’ve stated.
Data is always a tricky thing. One thing that has not changed is that MIT does not admit by major. So taking AP Chem to “impress” the adcom’s that you are a serious engineering applicant is not a successful strategy.