How come Caltech doesn't take any AP credits?

snowcapk
Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:46:00 +0000

Aurona: The English placement test is used to determine which students (usually ESL students) need remedial work in the English language. You do not get any credit for a perfect score on the English placement test. Just a warm feeling.

The purpose of not accepting AP credit is to encourage breadth of exploration in the humanities and social sciences. If you’ve already taken AP English, AP History, AP Music Theory, and AP Psychology, then during freshman year, you could expand your horizons by taking “Humanities on Film,” “Knowledge and Reality,” and “Nature of Religious Belief.”

The advanced HSS requirements work the same way. Let’s say you are interested in taking advanced psych courses but you have already taken AP Psychology. In order to count the course for advanced SS credit, you will need to take one of three different introductory psych courses: Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology. It does not matter at all which intro class you take. You can take the advanced course and the introductory course in any order, and you can take the advanced class first term frosh year if you feel like it. Another option would be to take the advanced psychology course and count it towards your “pick four” HSS requirement, in which case you need never take an intro psych class.

Have you tried accessing our online course catalog? ( [Caltech 2007-2008 Course Catalog](http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/) ) You will find that advanced HSS courses rarely require any prerequisites. Take whatever you want, in whatever order you want. I promise you that you will never have to retake an equivalent HSS class.