<p>I agree with ucbalumnus’s take on this. The thing that surprises me though is that more of those elite high schools haven’t done away with AP.</p>
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<p>Not quite, on a technicality: we simply don’t cover all of the material on the AP exam. Or rather, we cover somewhat different material - depth rather than breadth coupled with every teacher’s unique style of teaching and types of assignments given. The few students that insist on taking AP exams often have to study extra material months in advance. Interestingly, we also have to put in a decent amount of extra work to take certain SAT II’s (that is, if we want top scores; the material covered alone would probably still be enough for 650-700 or so).</p>