<p>As an international applicant to colleges in the United States, I went about preparing for exams and writing applications, something few of my peers had much experience in. The most difficult thing can be finding the right resources. Here in India, its easy enough to walk into a good bookstore and find books for the SAT, but try looking for books for the AP exam, and you might find yourself wandering hopelessly through all the markets even the largest cities have to offer, before eventually ordering them from Amazon or eBay in the US as I did, which eventually translates into long shipping durations, expensive dollar prices, and expensive shipping charges.</p>
<p>My idea is to integrate a marketplace into the CC forums. I know its possible to implement on a vBulletin system. That would make it extremely easy to trade books that might otherwise be unavailable in the local markets.</p>
<p>I realize such a software implementation takes resources, so I suggest starting off with something like a Sticky thread, before implementing a full-scale software.</p>
<p>I’d be glad if some students share my opinion and express their support on this thread.</p>
<p>Let me suggest you something. If you are interested in a particular book, or materials for a particular AP exam, start a thread and ask for people who have it to PM you and get in touch. From then on, you’ll figure out together.</p>
<p>Well, my thinking is that when students are researching colleges in the US, one of the first places they land up on is CC, and if I could get the books that I’m looking for nearer to home, then I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of ordering them from the US.</p>
<p>@tetrisfan - Its not like nobody takes the APs, sure they’re far less than SAT takers, mainly because there’s not enough awareness (they didnt know what the AP was when I asked them at the local Kaplan center.) People do take the AP in India, I think some of CC members from India took it last year.</p>
<p>@angelutza - That’s fine, but what I’m trying for is a more organized system. I doubt it’ll be very difficult to integrate and will only increase CC’s functionality.</p>
<p>Abhinav, yes, a few do take/plan on taking AP’s - I am one of them. The members who took AP’s last year were the twins, and they lived in Dubai where a lot more students head out to the US. In fact, here in Chennai, I have only heard of students from my school (quite a few of us head to the US every year) and the international school taking AP’s.</p>
<p>While I like your idea, I don’t think CC is meant to be a marketplace. Besides, why the heck would you order books from the US to prepare for APs - why not study with books from India that cover the same material? You can get a comprehensive description of each AP exam as well as one practice test from collegeboard.com for free.</p>
<p>I agree with tetris. Not a lot of students actually prefer to take the AP’s as it adds on to the pressure, as most people feel. But yeah, then again, there are people in schools like tetris’ who do take it up… Its more of a personal choice actually. I opted not to write it as I already had a heavy courseload at school and also had to juggle JEE classes…</p>
<p>Its not just about APs, try finding a book for the ACT if the SAT is not to your taste, or one of the CollegeBoard’s many publications other than the SAT blue book.</p>