One of the benefits of having an average stats kid is that most of her applications are to schools that don’t charge fees. We did pay one app charge and CSS for one school, but our tally so far is less than $100. We did get stuck a little on AP charges because D26 took AP Seminar and not AP Research but you have to pay for both tests anyway.
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That’s odd – they charged you fees for the whole AP Capstone sequence even though she didn’t take or get a score for AP Research? That seems unfair.
I was just over here thinking that we didn’t pay anything for AP tests so I asked my daughter and apparently she just paid for them. I kinda feel like I should give her the money back but she never said anything so…I’ll just consider this a parenting win.
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My D’s AP exams cost $115 each, so I’m assuming she is at a different bay area HS. I’m surprised that these exams cost different amounts at different schools!
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I hear you. Physics C is two exams too. I’m thankful that D25 is at a school that gave her credit for all of her APs (Wisconsin - Madison). I think it’s tough when kids are doing so many APs and possibly not even getting credit. We live in MA where community college is not free or discounted for high school students so DE is a pricey endeavor too…..
I forgot about those CSS fees too. $16 per school? Yeah, S26 had a bunch of CSS schools.
We are fortunate in that our school division pays for the SAT/PSAT tests (the ones taken during school only) and for all AP exams.
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Just realizing through people’s posts how expensive the testing regime is (not even counting test prep fees). Since my D26 went to a no AP high school and she decided to apply test-free to college after I stupidly forced her to take the SAT once prematurely (she refused to take it again after that experience), I was completely unaware of the big sums people spend collectively on all the AP tests, SAT/ACT, then paying to send all of those scores to schools! I “knew” theoretically it was expensive, but seeing the posts of the last few days has really made it sink in. I frankly find it a bit outrageous that they charge folks so much for this fairly standard part of the college admissions process, on top of application fees!
It does make me appreciate though that a silver lining of the pandemic is that there are more options for those who feel squeezed by the testing fee regime, and want to/need to skip as much of that as possible and still go to college. Presumably, there are more colleges now where a kid either in a no AP school, or a kid who takes AP classes but not the expensive tests, can apply and get in with no AP exams and no SAT/ACT tests. That seems a good thing to me on the grand scale of things.
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The benefit of AP exams (assuming you get a 4?) is most schools will accept them for credit and therefore you can place out of a ton of classes and potentially graduate a semester early and save on tuition/room & board. Or, at the very least, you can take 12 hours instead of 15 hrs a semester allowing you more free time for part time jobs, extra curriculars or study abroad.
The other benefit is if your degree requires some classes that you dont want to take in college, you can use APs to satisfy the requirements.
Any of the above scenarios, the fees may be worth it.
I was not intending to knock AP exams, I was commenting on the collective cost of all this testing for someone trying to apply to college. That said, my understanding is that AP exams do not universally give credit allowing one to graduate early, let alone take less classes, it depends on the school. Although I agree that they offer those benefits at most schools. At, my Alma mater (which I recognize is an outlier but it was my first choice and the only school I attended so what “most” schools did was ultimately irrelevant to me), all APs would get you is placement in a higher class level. I do not believe that policy has changed. But, it also turns out in my day, you didn’t even need that for most subjects, you just needed to sign up for the higher level or petition the prof to take it. Don’t know if that piece is still true there. My point is the benefits are not the same or even necessarily worth the cost everywhere.
APs exams have a lot of pluses, but can get expensive when adding to the other costs to get into college. And I don’t love that aspect of our “system” and like that more options now exist where expensive testing is not a required element now.
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Totally forgot about the cost of AP exams, S26 has no motivation to do more college apps, when I ask him if he’s doing anything else he says “We’re going to Yale! they sent me a book”. Which is true they did send a giant ass book, we also got a lot of paper from Chicago again not a target for him.
He feels comfortable with the CC to UC route plus the cost difference is just so big for him he doesn’t see the value of a OOS school being 2-3x more expensive than a UC. So we just might be done with applications. One of his friends hadn’t started his UC app until Friday so he feels good he got it done with 3 days to go.
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I feel like the entire system is a racket.
Standardrized testing is all over the place.
If you’re asking students to take them, consider them in a proportionate weighting to the time students prepared for the tests.
It’s crazy there are students who take the test 4 or 5 times. How many wasted hours for “one factor” in the application process when they couldve spent the time doing anything other than studying for the test with countless hours of stress.
It’s literally a waste of time unless you’re applying to a school that gives huge merit money based on the results.
If you’re only going to use it as a slight weighting, kids shouldnt be taking them at all and yet many schools still require them.
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Yes, it’s outrageous. If I think about D22 and the money we spent on AP testing (12 AP exams at around $100 each, $1200 over 3 years), 3 SAT attempts (at around $70 each $210), the tutoring we paid for (Princeton review class was $1200, a private tutor for a handful of sessions, let’s say $500), the application fees for 16 schools (some were free but I’ll estimate around $1000), sending scores to schools ($800), that’s $5k over the course of her high school life. (I won’t add up the travel costs when we had to go to Crescent City and Portland, OR to even get a seat at an SAT exam—this was during Covid and it was super tough to find a place to test in CA).
She ended up at UCLA, which is test blind and doesn’t give GE credit for AP classes. I think she tested out of Writing 1 and the rest of her incoming 54 units were just elective credits. She was a “senior” in standing by the end of her sophomore year, but so was everyone else at UCLA. She didn’t even benefit from early registration since AP credits don’t factor into that. And she is graduating in 4 years as expected.
It’s a total scam. And yet so totally normalized in our high-achieving public high school that to skip any of that would have us shaking in our boots. College Board sure has our number.
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Agree for the most part, though I wouldn’t necessarily call 4 SAT attempts a waste of time if not for merit, it likely depends.
I am generally not a fan of her, but this post by Sara Haberson has a good discussion of APs and why some private schools are eliminating them. it also mentions the point I made about my school (which was not Amherst), that some colleges give zero credit for APs.
It really depends on the college and major.
For my S23 (engineering major at UCB), he was able to use his APs for more than one year’s worth of the classes required for his degree, allowing him significantly more freedom throughout his four years to take additional advanced classes in his major, or other classes of interest. He could have graduated in three years easily (will be done with all requirements this semester), but is staying for his fourth year since there are still lots of interesting classes to take.
He advised his younger sister D26 to take as many APs as she could. And it turns out that most of the schools on her list will accept AP credit for at least some of the classes in her intended major, which would give her flexibility.
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I agree with this, I guess this is part of my frustration with it (again talking structural not personal), because one has to invest all of the money in the AP exams, before they have a clue what college they may go to, or in some cases what colleges they may even reasonably be competitive for. The exams may be extremely valuable and save a lot of time and money, or completely useless. And one doesn’t know until after the fact for many of them.
I will say, back in my day I was in AP Calculus senior year. I found out I got into my first choice school in the spring. Since it didn’t give any credit for APs, I skipped the exam on a May Saturday and saved the money (much to the chagrin of my AP calc teacher). I could not do the same for AP Spanish as I had already paid for and taken it.
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A friend of S26 planned to take the SATs over 10 times, his parents registered him for almost monthly SAT exams. I have no idea if this strategy led to a higher score. I just thought it nuts to make a kid sit through so many exams. We did 3 times and S26 was completely done with it by the last one.
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Both my kids took it 3 times.
The biggest improvement was from test 1 to test 2. And by test 3, they improved only slightly. They both said the test diffculty was about the same each time but they felt more relaxed because they were familar with the format.
D26 signed up for 3 SAT sittings, but cancelled the last one since she was happy enough with the 2nd.
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My daughter took it twice. But the first time she was sick and had never looked at any practice materials. It went well considering, but her score improved dramatically the second time after taking two practice tests and learning to use desmos. After that, she was done. She briefly considered doing it a third time but decided it wouldn’t be a good ROI because she didn’t apply any place where a higher SAT than she had would help her.
Yes! I asked and they said it’s just the way they do it- as a package deal. While I get that it makes it cheaper if you’re taking both, obviously it’s not a bargain if you’re only doing one.
Hopefully she’ll do well on her AP Lang exam and go to a school that gives some credit for AP Seminar.
D26 took the SATs once and didn’t do great, but she didn’t even study a little. We talked about taking it again but she decided to skip it.