I know there were a few thread on this issue a few years back but just wanted to get some update. My kid is a junior and attends one of GLADCHEMS schools that doesn’t offer AP courses. He is taking honors classes but with increased work load and sports commitment he does not have time to prepare for these exams.
We don’t care about college credits and just want to know if he doesn’t take ap exam will that go against him. Even though the school scrapped the AP curriculum they keep offering AP exams which sends mixed message and a lot of driven kids still take the exam. The college counselor is also very vague on his response when we pinned him down.
Based on recent trend will choosing not to take the AP exam, coming from top boarding schools, adversely impact his college app process?
If you don’t care about getting the college credits there is no reason to take the AP exams. Admission officers know that your school does not offer AP classes. There will be zero concern about course rigor coming from a top boarding school.
FWIW our competitive public HS hasn’t offered APs for over a decade. D took Advanced Level classes without taking the coresponding AP exam and it was no issue for college admissions.
My third of four boarding school kids is graduating from boarding school next month and none of them have taken the AP exams because their boarding schools offered their own advanced courses - unless you need the credit, I wouldn’t worry about it (most schools just give you credit for electives anyway). Each of their schools has offered placement exams that they could take for math instead.
What I don’t understand is that why are other kids taking this exam if it doesn’t move the dial for college entrance. The FOMO is really intense among his peer group as in taking the AP exam is a rite of passage despite school not offering the AP curriculum. Alot of his peers have outside tutor to prep for this exam. It’s wild!!
Will Top 20 colleges looks less favourable on a kid who took it vs who didn’t it take it coming from same school?
That’s my only question and concern. Also the school makes it as clear as mud when we ask these questions as they publish AP score and how many kids took it on school profile.
As one who took several exams, I can give you the data point of one; college credit.
But that doesn’t matter to your kid, so my reasons don’t apply
Some people incorrectly think that AP scores carry a great deal of weight in admissions; they don’t. They carry even less weight when the school doesn’t offer AP and when the school’s curriculum is rigorous on its own.
Your kid needs to do college planning without worrying about what others are doing.
Like others, at our feederish mostly-day private high school, they offered very few AP courses (the Calcs, modern languages, and CS), and most kids only took 2 or 3. There was zero culture of taking AP exams outside of these few actual AP courses, except sometimes Physics which people might do for credit or placement purposes.
So I am equally confused as to why at your school there seems to be such a culture. I thought, in fact, part of the whole point of these schools was that the advanced classes were generally more college-like than most AP courses, and that colleges could rightly trust that top grades in their advanced courses were much more predictive of future college class performance than AP scores.
So I really don’t know why students at these schools who did not need them for credit or placement purposes would feel the need to take extra APs, and I have never seen anything encouraging that sort of thinking coming from college AOs. But I think you can try to press your college counselors on the subject for insight, since it is a puzzle.
Applying to Oxford/Cambridge? They help. True at a few foreign universities that are looking for an international standard because the US system allows far too much variation in curriculum across schools.
College credit is helpful if you will attend a school where it can be difficult to graduate in 4 years due to the school being impacted. Think Cal/UCLA etc… it’s an insurance policy against a 5th yr.
Also helpful if you will attend a school with significant graduation requirements and would like to get some gen ed requirements taken care of before arriving. This lets you go deeper into the subjects you prefer, and can support a double major as well. It’s not about the college credit, it’s about slaying gen ed in high school so you can fill your college schedule with the cool classes.
Submitting just one exam buys you the opportunity to take three rather than four classes, or drop one class, if you have a particularly difficult or time consuming class one term.
My eldest took several APs, and reported the scores in applications, but did not submit them to the school for credit when he enrolled. He wanted a big, fun public university. Was offered Echols Scholar at UVA and Regents Scholar at Cal. Both programs eliminate gen ed requirements. But if he hadn’t been offered those programs, the APs would have been essential and he would submitted them just to get to the higher level classes at the start of college. Taking the exams was a hedge that he ultimately did not need.
I don’t think not taking them will hurt a student in admissions at all. But they can be selectively useful.
Do you care about advanced placement or subject credit that may be given for AP scores, so that the student does not have to repeat what they already learned in high school and is placed appropriately in more advanced entry-level courses in college?
There should be no need to prepare specifically for an AP exam if the associated course covers the material (or a superset of it), and the student does well.
Not all advanced level courses cover all of the AP material. For example our HS dropped APs so teachers/students could delve into certain areas more in depth, focus on research papers, etc., particularly in humanities courses. Those who wanted to take the AP exam often needed to do additional prep work for topics not covered in the classroom. YMMV -both by school and by course.
Let me offer a contrarian view. In CA, the UC’s use AP exams as a backdoor to get at your SAT scores, since for political reasons the UC’s are “test blind” with respect to SAT scores. So if you can show a string of 4’s and 5’s, that is a wink-wink to the UC admissions officer that you are very strong academically. GPA alone is insufficient anymore since tremendous grade inflation. And many school don’t offer class rank. So college guidance counselors in CA teach you to write down your AP scores, or say that you’re a National Merit Semifinalist (if that is true), or an “AP Scholar with Distinction”, etc. to signal strong academic ability in the absence of SAT scores.
It has not seemed to hurt my kids - they’ve gone to ND, Cal Poly SLO, and UPenn with no AP scores… I think the schools know that the boarding school advanced classes are rigorous.
Our kids went to a competitive day school in our state and the school did not offer AP courses. Like your school, students still took several AP exams and the school offered the testing without teaching the class. It was beyond annoying - but if their peers were taking the exams, my kids felt like they would be at a disadvantage if they didn’t. I wish the school just didn’t offer the exams - as they are always saying they want to reduce the stress around college admissions. Since they did offer the exams, our kids sat for those exams. The college counselors were very transparent with kids that apply to x, y and z school historically take a, b and/or c AP exam. Your college counselor should be able to guide you vs being vague, imo. If the schools on your child’s college list are not ones that their peers take AP to boost their application - then easier to pass.
PS: It was never about the college credit and 100% to show rigor/preparedness over your peers. It stinks !
I understand -our kids school is highly ranked in the US too - day vs boarding - and all I was saying that if peers from the school are doing it that it makes it hard not to do it. I don’t like the system, but if the school is offering the tests and kids are taking it and applying to the same group of schools - I would want the counselor to be upfront with me.
This may not be relevant. Taking the classes is likely what’s relevant for those who have them offered. That’s how they build rigor in schools that offer them.
In fact, these kids in AP are getting admitted before many of the tests even happen.
I think you’re equating tests to admissions and I don’t think it matters. The test itself may only matter for credit and placement at these schools.
Just want to add that since the student is at a top boarding school, the first and best source of advice will be the guidance office – they will have the school specific knowledge and historical data to properly guide the student.