It’s common courtesy to provide a link to data and/or studies that one cites. I also would like to read this study that you cited:
A kind reminder that CC is supposed to be a friendly and welcoming site. Recent posters should review the ToS and Guidelines which are linked on the bottom of every page.
Thanks for your understanding.
Many repeatedly post here that AP exams are irrelevant for admission. See above on this thread in many posts deemed on topic. To be specific, OP asked why “public schools with AP offerings have lower admission” than private schools without similar educational offerings.
William Fitzsimmons (still head of admissions) of [Harvard] said publicly that AP exams are one of the best predictors of success at Harvard, and that scores are closely scrutinized. In the Students for Fair Admission trial, internal emails specifically referenced AP exam scores as impressive.
Can someone making these claims please provide a written source for the hundreds of assertions all over CC by the same “admissions experts” that AP classes are largely irrelevant, not taken into account by admissions?
For admissions, don’t conflate AP classes with AP scores. AO’s won’t make that mistake.
Where private schools don’t offer AP courses, they likely offer courses of similar rigor or beyond. I’m not sure anyone here has said that taking challenging courses across most, or all, core subjects is important for college admissions.
And here is what their colleagues up the street say:
Let me state clearly: we do not admit students solely because of their AP courses/scores. There is no minimum or recommended number of AP courses. AP scores are not part of an admission formula.
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Actually, your citation seems to say the opposite from what you say. In fact, the speaker states “In many schools, I know, AP courses are the best (and sometime the only) option for students looking to be challenged and intellectually engaged”. “taking advanced courses for love of learning is a great reason to do so. In our admissions process, we are looking for students who enjoy a challenge and love learning, becuase these are the students who will best thrive in the MIT community.”
The only issue is with taking an excessive course load again to quote “to the detriment of everything else”. Followed by illustrative examples of students sacrificing extracurricular activities in the service solely of AP’s. Really that’s the context. Not sure how we get to “AP’s are largely irrelevant” from there.
Your quote that AP exam grades SOLELY are not a reason for admission and aren’t part of an admission formula is the same treatment as GPA, SAT scores, Extracurriculars, Service, really any activity. If you solely volunteer at a soup kitchen to the detriment of your academics, MIT isn’t going to be for you. If you solely get a 1600 on the SAT, you’re not going to get into MIT, nor if you are solely the #1 corn hole champ of the United States. That’s the holistic thing. Nothing is solely.
Can you please clarify how you get from there to saying that AP classes are largely irrelevant which seems a common theme? Really, the citation you provide says the opposite.
The citation is from Daniel Golden’s BOOK “The Price of Admission” - https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975
Please enjoy. It’s a great read. If you find the exact page # in your reading, please share with the community.
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My clarification is that I said no such thing.
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Sorry, I mistook your saying that taking an extra AP was less worthwhile than scooping ice cream or folding clothes to be an assertion that AP’s were not terribly relevant for admission. My mistake and apologies.
Thanks for the source. I did read that book, 18 years ago or so. I don’t think I will go pull any of the author’s cites of pre-2006 studies, because I doubt they would be relevant to admissions today.
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No—I’m really interested!!
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I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. I’m reading your tone that way, but on the chance that you are asking a genuine question with your “mistakes and apologies,” comment, I’ll chime in with my thoughts.
I do think that with holistic admissions, a summer job can show something about an applicant that a summer spent studying for an extra AP may not. I think of it as diminishing returns for additional AP scores. If you have already shown that you can score a 4 or a 5 on eight AP exams, are you giving the admissions office a lot of new information about you with the ninth exam? But if you have never had a summer job before or had to do (the customer is always right) service work or the grind of menial labor, a typical teen job can both teach you some new and important soft skills (that will be useful later in life) and also show admissions offices a part of your life or character that one more AP score may not.
I am biased of course because my older kids have gone to schools that don’t offer AP classes at all and despite my urging them to self-study, they completely ignored my advice and did not. Nevertheless, so far, they have done very well in their college admissions including being admitted to the Ivy League schools to which they applied (if that is how we are measuring success). The college offices at both their schools did say outright that a summer job was probably a more useful way to spend their time than self-studying for an AP, but perhaps the advice would have been different if the schools offered AP classes.
It doesn’t have to be a black and white statement that jobs are always better than APs, but I haven’t read anyone saying that. What I have read people saying is that jobs can teach some kids aspects of themselves that additional academic experiences (on top of the academic outcomes they’ve already achieved) do not.
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And to add to your fine post- graduating seniors who have never held down a paying job ( no matter how glitzy the internship was at your uncle’s private wealth management firm, or mom’s law firm) are at a disadvantage when it comes time to interview for fulltime jobs.
Some kids live in places where there are robust opportunities for HS kids and summer jobs. Some kids do not. Every AO knows this; every corporate recruiter knows this.
But a kid who has literally never worked- not babysitting, not lawn mowing, not scooping ice cream, not handing out keys in the university’s housing office- is going to be stumped by a very common interview question-- “Tell me about an entrepreneurial experience you’ve had” or “the strategy role you are interviewing for requires someone who is a confident disrupter. Can you give me an example of how you’ve done that?”
It doesn’t matter if the disrupter noticed that 11 pm-midnight at the ice cream counter was very busy but management scheduled only a skeleton crew for “closing” (and suggested a way to fix the manpower problem and reduce the lines and customer complaints) or did something that sounded more impressive. The former is a great answer. Something entrepreneurial can be as prosaic as “I couldn’t get a job the summer after I turned 16 so I advertised to local parents that I was running a sports camp in the local park. I had 8 ten year old’s practicing their dribbling, shooting hoops, practicing putting with a fake green I created, and lots and lots of juice and dollar store snacks. I cleared $1500 and had a waiting list for every single week”.
Kids who WANT to do something academic/self study over the summer- fantastic. Kids who believe that only AP whatever or a made up internship working for your parents are the only alternatives for a productive summer experience- well, that’s sad.
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No one ever said that jobs don’t teach life lessons. That’s great for life and for college. So is lacrosse and so is the Tuba. So is tennis. Or maybe jobs are so good we should just cancel high school and send everyone to work at the mall. Says a lot about anti-intellectualism and our country and values that people can’t cheer enough for scooping ice cream and are deeply skeptical of calculus. Been outside the USA much? That’s why our country matches up so well with Europe and Asia. Seen British A-levels? They make AP’s look like child’s play
Anti-intellectualism comes in three very predictable forms. First, for example, making service and “taking an extra AP class over the summer” mutually exclusive. Students are expected to be well rounded and studying and working and maybe working on a sport all at the same time is de rigeur. So a job is good experience. Wonderful. So is learning physics.
Second, anti-intellectualism immediately labels anyone wanting to take an extra academic class, especially AP’s as boring academic drones. Your words not mine. Beyond obvious bogus stereotypes that this evokes, and beyond the clear presumptuousness of drawing this conclusion about kids you have never met, it should be obvious to anyone with admissions experience that the best students are often also some of the best athletes and some of the most engaged in their school community and beyond.
Third, anyone considering doing more AP’s (because AP’s are the question on this thread) is presumed to be taking extra classes due to meaningless and naive unauthentic striving. How patronizing! Do you feel the same about the athlete who plays lacrosse, basketball, golf, baseball and football? No, we call those people most of the elite athletes in the country. If someone who wants to go to MiT asks if he should take extra summer math, why is that person presumptively a strivey, unauthentic person who would be better off scooping ice cream? If he wants to go to MiT wouldn’t a more plausible conclusion be that he likes math and wants to get better at it?
But no, tell that kid he’d be better off folding clothes at the gap than studying more math. It’s one or the other. Tell everyone that AP’s don’t matter (because every case is about unauthentically adding a 17th AP class). I’m sure thats the enlightened advice people come to CC for.
My MIT kid (did not scoop ice cream…cleaned the floors at a fast food joint because it paid more than scooping) had LOTS of friends there (probably his entire fraternity) whose summers were spent delivering pizza, running a cash register, teaching kids how to swim/pulling them out of the deep end, etc. Normal HS type jobs.
This isn’t anti-intellectualism… this is just a datapoint from ONE university where apparently the admissions folks understand that not every kid has the luxury of the endless bank of Mom and Dad; not every kid has the fallback position of influential family member getting the kid a job in a research lab; not every kid has parents who want to shelter them from Jane and Joe Public by making sure that their days are spent in a rarified environment studying Topology instead of wiping counters.
And your comparison to Europe is ludicrous. The reason why HS kids in many parts of Europe don’t have these kinds of jobs is because grownups- with families to feed- work these jobs, and there is no room for teenage employment in their economies.
??? I’m not sure when I have ever labeled anyone taking an extra academic class as a boring academic drone. If taking extra classes makes one boring then I must be the most boring person in the world since I have continued to take classes well into adulthood and middle-age. I don’t know who you are arguing with in these absolutist statements about other posters or dismissing others as anti-intellectual just because they might see value in things that you do not.
In any case, I am trying to have polite thoughtful conversations when I post on CC with room for nuance in recognition that different people have different needs and concerns. In other words, I am trying to give other posters the benefit of the doubt even when I disagree with them (though once in awhile I get a little judgy, I do try to rein it in!). I hope that you can give others the benefit of the doubt as well.
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I guess if your point is that MIT the premier technical school in our country selected your child on the basis of excellence in sweeping floors or in being popular, I’d say I’m pretty skeptical that there weren’t a trove of other great academics, grades and scores and probably some great extracurriculars as well. I’d like to give your kids all of those positive presumptions. It’s not hard to do.
And I don’t know whether british kids scoop Ice Cream. What I can say is that british a-levels, the south korean national exam and many other countries’ standard for excellence in math and science far surpasses even AP’s, so Im all for US kids’ jumping on Khan (a free resource) as much as they can. You should look at the Oxbridge math entrance exam. Then think if even one of the kids in your county could get 25% correct. That’s the problem with anti-intellectualism. Not money. Learning.