<p>I got in the mail a letter saying that I was going recieve the National AP Scholar Award (take 8 APs and get average of 4). Is that impressive?</p>
<p>To be honest, those awards aren’t worth very much, as a lot of Berkeley applicants have a lot of APs (or a decent number of APs along with an IB diploma (as was the case with many Berkeleyans from my HS)). Having APs under your belt will help, but the special piece of paper doesn’t do much.</p>
<p>Come on, this is UC Berkeley!! You’re not gonna wow anybody with that…</p>
<p>really, at this point, it doesn’t matter whether you got 3’s or 5’s on your AP’s. nor does it matter how many AP’s you have. A majority of ur APs wont get you out of anything, and for those that do, a 3 will suffice.</p>
<p>I don’t remember where I saw it unfortunately, but in 2008, there were around 12,000 National AP Scholars out of roughly 1.2 million test-takers, or about 1% of all test takers.</p>
<p>…Which sounds great until you realize that the 1.2 million test-takers took roughly 2 million tests, so the vast majority of people who take AP tests probably didn’t remotely qualify for the award. I think out of the people that had the opportunity/time to take 8 AP tests, the percentile is much higher (I don’t remember/know what that percentile is though, unfortunately).</p>
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<p>Comp Sci AB (no longer offered), Calc BC, Eng Lit & Comp, and many others require a 5 to place out. Based on the website, it seems that 3’s on AP will give credits, but the AP’s won’t actually help you place out of classes except a select few. For those, you usually need a 4 or 5</p>
<p>National Ap Scholar for last year? Scores don’t even come out until July for this year, But congratz!!! But like everyone else has said, don’t rely on it to get in, but its still impressive! 8 APs is no laughing matter!</p>
<p>its on my resume awards section but that’s all it’s good for lol. But ignore the “only need a 3” thing, not true at all.</p>
<p>I think Physics AP - you need a 5, probably.</p>
<p>mathboy98, I took Physics C and got a 5 on both test and it only counts for Physics 7A. I still have to take Physics 7B. </p>
<p>You need to get two 5s on Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism to test out of the 1 class.</p>
<p>I don’t know about Calc BC as for minimum score, but a 5 placed me out of 1a/b.</p>
<p>It’s good to fill up your resume, just to make it look slightly more impressive.</p>
<p>However, compared to other students at Berkeley – yes, to an extent, but not really. I have that, as well as several of my friends. It’s like have a GPA above 3.8 in high school.</p>
<p>However, all those AP tests you took to get you that award will get you something much more valuable than just something that looks impressive: lots of units that allow you an earlier TeleBears session. :P</p>
<p>Not exactly true about the 5’s on Physics C. To my knowledge, College of Engineering only cares about your Mechanics score–a 5 in that fulfills your 7A requirement. The E&M grade counts for nothing.
College of Chemistry is weird. A total score of 9 or above on both exams allows you to skip 7A…weird. A 4 in Mechanics and a 5 in E&M allows you to skip 7A (mechanics) in CoC. </p>
<p>As for the National AP Scholar thing, yeah, not impressive relative to other Berkeley students.</p>
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<p>No, for the COE you only need a 5 on mechanics. You can opt not to take the AP E&M, I’m fairly sure. In fact, I think it doesn’t matter whether you take AP E&M at all, because you probably have to do Physics 7B anyway.</p>
<p>I think for L&S, a 5 on both AP E&M and Mechanics grants you credits for both courses…not quite certain if you can do less than that.</p>