Want to go for biological and computer engineering. I know MIT is the better school, but I have a lot of AP credits that would transfer for Northwestern and not for MIT. Thoughts?
AP credits shouldn’t be the deciding factor. Which school do you like better? Or which is a better fit for your interests and personality? Did you go to CPW?
Have you already been accepted by both? If not, don’t worry about it yet.
If you were admitted to MIT and NU, you would have needed to notify them as to whether you are attending by May 1. so either it is too late, or it is too early.
Apply to both & be grateful if admitted to one.
Did you get off a waitlist?
APs can save you tens of thousands of dollars, so I don’t agree they are necessarily a bad reason to help decide between 2 colleges that are both among the top in the world.
I wouldn’t recommend using APs to place in higher maths and physics at either school first semester. It’s a whole different ball game. Give yourself a chance to catch up to the pace of play and not get curved into a 2.0 out of the gate. Unless you’re a hawkings level talent.
^ True, be cautious about using APs to place but credits are perfectly fine in subjects that don’t build on each other or ones you won’t go further in.
@PurpleTitan 100 percent correct. Thanks for the clarification. I was thinking of jumping maths at either school.
@ Kleinbri002 - Congratulations on MIT and NU!
I always thought my son would go to MIT, but he visited NU and decided early on to be a Wildcat. I am posting today because I disagree about not using AP to place out of lower level classes. I realize that not everyone can handle it, but some students can, and my son was bored in a freshman level Intro to Engineering class at NU after taking AP level math and Physics C in HS. Thanks to AP credits in HS and 5’s on the AP tests, he was able to enter NU as a “freshman with sophomore standing”, and was able to graduate from NU with a MS in engineering in 4 years.
Bottom line - you should check the projected credits you will get from both schools, as that might affect your decision. You really can’t make a wrong decision, so a win-win for you, and a pay-off for all your hard work and study. Good Luck! 
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Many schools post previous midterms and finals on line. Not sure if MIT does but I believe you can find old exams for NU. My daughter did this for her school and moved ahead in math. It was the right decision for her.
IMO, there is no one size fits all in using AP credits.
“I know MIT is the better school”
I don’t think that I would agree with the phrasing of this statement. MIT is the higher ranked university. However, both MIT and Northwestern are excellent schools, and both are a very good fit for some students.
MIT is academically very challenging. Studying there has been compared to drinking water from a fire hose. The high pace does not let up for a full four years. It is a great university if you want to do it. However, you really have to want to study that hard for four full years if you are going to attend MIT. Given that the alternative is Northwestern, you have a really good alternative.
I had a similar choice to make many years ago (my alternative was not Northwestern, but was similarly ranked and also excellent). I went with MIT largely because it was higher ranked. I still do not know whether I made the right decision, although I think that I would probably have eventually ended up in the same place either way. I do think that I made the decision for the wrong reason.
I agree with other statements that AP credits should not be the deciding factor. You need to decide where you want to be for four years.
I am curious: Did you get into one of these schools off the waitlist? Otherwise shouldn’t you have already decided before now?
Lots of kids get extensions for decisions these days. MIT has some really good bioinformatics degrees to look into.
Look at this MIT degree program-
http://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/computer-science-molecular-biology-course-6-7/
Also MIT is expanding in Computer science, I do worry that they will poach great teachers from places like Northwestern, in hiring 25 faculty in five years. Its a worry, where are these top experts coming from?
It will be a brain drain, unfortunately for a few other colleges, hard to tell which ones will be poached at this point.
MIT is placing a lot of emphasis on AI and another subject, like art, biology, chemistry etc.
Here are all the details of how MIT is expanding.
http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-college-of-computing-1015
Better to try the college’s old final exams of the course that is allowed to be skipped to check one’s knowledge by the college’s standards. This will allow a more informed placement decision than blindly repeating one’s AP credit which could be a waste of time and tuition that could be used to learn something else. Some colleges have their own placement exams that they use in addition to AP scores (e.g. MIT has its own math diagnostic exam mentioned at http://math.mit.edu/academics/undergrad/first/ap.php ).
Also, in addition to the options of placing into a more advanced course or repeating one’s AP credit, some colleges may offer an option of taking an honors or otherwise more in-depth version of the course. For example, MIT allows a 5 on both AP physics C exams to skip the usual first physics course 8.01 ( https://uaap.mit.edu/first-year-mit/first-year-academics/incomingcredit/previous-study/ap-and-transfer-credit-advanced-placement ) but also offers the option of taking 8.012, a more mathematically advanced version ( https://web.mit.edu/physics/prospective/undergrad/firstyear.html ).
@ucbalumnus Well the same answer must be applied to blindly choosing a school based on ap placement. Correct.
And good luck getting a copy of the final for a particular class. If available you have to take and score yourself? For both schools. And do this is a week or so? Not realistic.
But I also see no reason why a MIT or Northwestern physics class or calc class couldn’t be useful. What’s the rush and why not build on your base knowledge or remove any gaps in the high school level class. I’ve spoken to a lot of talented students who felt calc at the university level at schools of this level of excellence to be much more theoretical and different than a HS ap class.
Sharpen twice and cut once.
Not hard to do for single variable calculus courses at MIT and Northwestern.
http://math.mit.edu/~jspeck/18.01_Fall%202017/1801_Exams.html
https://www.math.northwestern.edu/documents/220_Self_Placement.pdf
https://www.math.northwestern.edu/documents/224_Self_Placement.pdf
@ucbalumnus That’s only one possibility. And how about any of the other points. And who’s grading the mock exams. You know it can vary what a particular prof is looking for and focus changes.