It’s not personal, but it’s also not hard to imagine students reading many many posts here by self-proclaimed “adcoms” or “authorities” who feel very clearly and strongly that all self-study AP’s regardless of person, context, student, level are suspect or bad. And in those contexts, it does get very personal in the implication that even considering advanced self-study can render that student a “boring, academic drone” or “professional student” (pejorative intended).
And that’s what I mean by “who are we to judge?”. For a website intended to help students, it’s disappointing to see so much cynicism. When someone asks “what are my chances to get into Cornell with a 4.0, 1550 and 5 national level EC’s” why is the answer so frequently - “the overall admission rate is 4% so keep dreaming?” Both false (as to the percentage as students’ chances vary as to their scores and accomplishments) and just unpleasant.
And when someone asks whether they should study a subject they are interested in, and will colleges appreciate my curiosity, why is the answer so often, “nice try, you unauthentic, striver”? I think kids deserve (and are in actually given by admissions committees) a lot more credit than that.
Sure, it’s great to learn how to discuss topics. Yes, in the real world, that can be important. Yes EQ can pay more than IQ. But no, every learning experience doesn’t have to be infused with the socratic method. My in-person European history class was far from socratic. My college course on Michelangelo had 500 students in it, so that was far from conversational. Both were among the most interesting courses I took. I got the discussion thing in my writing seminar.
Off hand I can’t remember anyone here who you might be quoting.
What I do remember many saying, and I say myself, is that with qualifications like that you are competitive for any college including Cornell, but you should be aware that sometimes people who are extremely competitive in those ways still do not get into any one particular college like that, and sometimes they get into none. So, while obviously it is perfectly fine to apply to Cornell with such qualifications, you should still make sure to apply to some other colleges, including what I would call Likelies and Targets.
I don’t think anyone should find that sort of message insulting. It is just a sensible strategy given the observable uncertainty in admissions at colleges like Cornell.
Again, I am not aware of who you might be quoting.
Certainly the poster you are responding to, namely me, did nothing of the sort. I specifically acknowledged it is understandable why in some circumstances a kid would want to go beyond what their HS offered. My point was simply there might be better and worse ways of doing that, and it will often depend on the type of topic you want to explore further.
So again, it seems to me you have these sorts of insults echoing in your head, and you are constantly striving to make every conversation a rebuttal of those insults. I really think you should just let it go, because even if someone did say something like that to you in the past, I don’t see anyone still doing it.
Once again, who do you think said that? I don’t see anyone here having said that.
As an aside, the Socratic Method is just one very specific discussion technique, and I was not particularly fond of it myself when teaching in college.
While the research is a bit dated (10 years’ish), the friendly folks at UNC answered the question, at least for them, as to how many APs are appropriate - self-study or otherwise. There answer was that they saw a benefit through 5 APs, but beyond that there was no noticeable benefit.
That said, they also indicate that they do not hold it against a kid who elects to take more than 5 APs.
Perhaps these arguments above are just going around in circles. While I do think it is laudable for a student who wants to learn about a subject to self-study for an AP exam, I suspect many above are suggesting that self-studying for an AP exam may not be the best approach to accomplishing that goal: demonstrated interest in a subject and knowledge gained. It may be the best way, but there are likely many other ways to demonstrate knowledge and profeciency of the material.
I’ve said exactly the opposite - that self-study in some contexts is great. My kid self-studied for 3 APs and didn’t take official AP classes with approved syllabi for any AP classes. But it accomplished the goal of showing some degree of rigor and also allowing kid to skip those classes in college - my computer kid is thrilled not to need to take the 1 semester of chemistry required for all engineering students. I don’t think that anybody on this board would argue that an outcome like this is bad or a problem. but, had kid wanted to be a chemical engineer. we would strongly recommend that kid not skip the first semester of chemistry as allowed by the 4 on the AP exam and instead take the full sequence at the college. While AP exams show that you have a decent understanding of the basics of a topic, any given college may add a lot more content to a class. If that class is the basis for your degree path, I’d want to make sure that I knew everything being covered.
But, from a learning perspective, my kid learned far more in 2 self-designed computing classes than would have been possible if we had been following an AP syllabus. Kid also took electives in a couple of programming languages over the years. These classes show an interest in kid’s desired field, yet there is no AP exam. Studying for that would have been limiting. But, had kid not had access to the other classes, then maybe AP CS would have been the best option.
I’ll also add that, even as a homeschooler, we did very little with ‘impressing adcoms’ in mind. Unless you are looking at a highly selective school, there is no reason to think this way. Many state Us or directional state Us aren’t too hard to get into in-state, so there is an option to get a perfectly reasonable education without jumping through a lot of hoops.