No AP: no chance?

paying3tuitions
Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:49:31 +0000

About having no AP’s: Worry less. If you were in this country going to visit the campuses, you’d hear over and over again, the Admissions Officers saying, “We seek students who make the most of their available curriculum; take the most rigorous courses available to them, makes the most of their resources and environment.”

In the U.S. there is a great difference among the wealthy and poor school districts as to how many AP’s are offered. Five years ago we lived in a poor rural community that offered only one AP. Then we moved to a well-to-do suburb that offers more than 15. The very tough schools in the middle of some American cities offer NO Ap’s. ANd yet, every year, people get in from all 3 kinds of these schools, to colleges and universities representing every level of difficulty.

Logically, if it were required that you have AP’s, that would be on the application. But it’s NOT. It’s there on the transcript if you have it. It’s understood as a headstart for having credits completed before you get to the college, and sometimes gets you out of a prerequisite course in a department, since it was college level.

It is NOT held against you if your school offers no or few AP’s. What’s a bad idea is to go to a school full of AP’s and decide not to take them, then try for top schools. That would sound like an uninspired student.

If you want to demonstrate your academic skill in a way to be compared with other students in the US or around the globe, take the SAT-I’s and SAT-II’s which are standardized tests. Gooogle up College Board. THESE are required, but not AP’s!!
If you can’t get to an SAT, you can instead take ACT exams for most, if not all, schools these days.

As for not having GPA or rank, again, don’t worry. You have a transcript of courses with grades, right? If it says “A” the college or uni will apply a number to it, “B” and so forth. FOr ranking, you might see if a teacher or head-of-school would write in a letter, “Our school doesn’t rank but if we did, this student would be in the top X% of his class; or she’d be in the Top l0 or Top 20 studeents…”

Sometimes there are situations here where class rank is impossible. For example, there are some students who study at home. Homeschoolers are always #1, LOL. Or, my S skipped 11th grade, so even though his school ranks, they wouldn’t rank him because of the skip. It actuallly worked to his advantage, since he wouldn’t have ranked so high anyway. He was basically in a hurry to get on with his life He did fine and got in where he wanted the most. I was told to have the school’s counselor to attach a note saying WHY he wasn’t ranked, but simply forgot. I think that would have been wiser to explain why it wasn’t there instead of just leaving out “class rank.” Still, he got into the university he was most interested for his major.

Your situation sounds unique, so please concentrate on writing excellent and personal essays to describe what your schooling WAS. Don’t be concerned what was NOT. Focus on who you are and write with a postive writer’s voice so they can envision you, your situation, and what you did to get the best possible education within those limitaitons and opportunities. And let your individual personality shine through the words of the essay. They want to know what kind of person you are. Students aren’t machines, after all!

Worry less. Good luck!