Relative importance of AP's

passthepotatoes
Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:02:38 +0000

Boo on your local school. That makes me mad. It costs them nothing to include homeschoolers and it is flat out mean spirited that they won’t.

Call the College Board on the phone. They will be able to give you a list of schools in your area that offer the tests. You may want to also contact private schools. A couple of the schools in our area were very happy to have homeschoolers join their school for AP tests, even if they were not offering that exact test. We had to pay a nominal proctoring fee - maybe $20.

APs aren’t the only route to go and certainly many kids get admitted to great schools without them. If your child is interested in them, I wouldn’t rule it out due to the testing center problem. We found APs worth it. It was a good way to demonstrate outside evidence of accomplishment. Also, it was worth it in terms of credit college credit. To give an example, one AP bio test netted ten full credits worth several thousand dollars. The point isn’t to get through college in a rush, but instead to have sufficient challenge during high school and to enter college with the flexibility to take classes of greater interest.