Can a 8th grader take AP exam?

[vistor]

@Lindagaf

Your son speaking Chinese is great. It will no doubt serve him well. But the AP Chinese exam will have NO effect whatsoever in his college decisions. If he wants to do it for fun or for possible credit that’s a legitimate reason for him to take it. But does HE want to do it? Also, it’s not a cheap test.

Colleges will not be impressed. It will only be good for credit at probably a limited number of public universities. And who knows what colleges will accept in five years? I honestly think this is a waste of your money and his time.

@vistor , why does the timing of learning language matter? If your goal for your son is an elite college, which I suspect it is, you are not looking at this in the right way. No, it doesn’t matter if someone is trilingual or bilingual or monolingual. Think how many kids in this country grow up speaking dual languages, with no extra paid-for classes in which to learn their other language. If your son is passionate about learning other languages, that’s a wonderful thing for him to develop and be involved with, but it’s no ticket to an elite college.

And also, it really needs to come from your son, not from you. @lookingforward is an AO at a very prestigious college. Read her posts. You and your son (when the time comes, which really doesn’t need to be in 8th grade) have plenty of time to understand what it is that elite schools look for. It’s not a 5 on an AP language test when the child already speaks that language fluently.

Thanks for your reply。 You sounds a very experienced parent, and knows clearly about college app. I do want to my son to get into an elite college, but I do not calculate everything to how much the direct impact in college app, and I don’t think anyone can. I only know that at this moment, just for this concrete thing(taking Chinese AP exam), both me and my son want to get it done. For my son side, he wants to get this done, since he will finish this class by May, and all other students in the class will take the exam. On my side, I want to use this as a motivation to let him learn Chinese better. I know taking an AP exam at 8th grade will not directly help his college app 4. 5 years later, or maybe 0 help like you/@lookingforward/@skieurope and many other said, but this will help him learning a language and culture, and this ability/knowledge/discipline/hardworking should be able to transfer to other subjects learning in more or less degree. Plus, learning Chinese is almost the only thing I can help him academically. This is my vision.