AP exams are not mandatory; however, if you have taken any AP exams, you are required to self-report all your AP scores in your application.
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Annndddd back we go!
Not too surprising, since some in college admissions have said that subject matter standardized testing on advanced level material is a better predictor of college performance than SAT or ACT, although access and availability can be wildly different across students and high schools, making it unrealistic to require them.
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Also not surprised. I expect more schools will follow.
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This is also typically a requirement for UK universities, as it is required by the UCAS (some UK universities accept US applications outside of the UCAS, and I have not verified if all of those would require reporting all APs).
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Makes sense, what is the counter-argument for NOT having this type of policy?
One counterargument would be that teaching quality may be an issue at disadvantaged high schools and varies both among high schools and among teachers within the same high school. This can be as basic as whether the class covered all the material.
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However, it is likely that admission readers already interpret the absence of an AP score accompanying an AP course (particularly in something like math or foreign language where AP credit is most likely) as meaning that the student earned a “low” AP score and is hiding it (but “low” may be anything from a 1 to a 4).
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For schools requiring all AP scores to be reported, I would assume that students will, in fact, report scores for all AP exams they took, even the low ones, thus decreasing their chance of admissions (what the previous poster was asking about).
Not listing an AP score for an AP course - at schools that don’t require all AP scores to be reported - is a different question. AP exams are now around $100 each. Many, many students do not take the corresponding AP exam for the AP course they took, and they don’t need to be disadvantaged to have such a perspective. I have no idea whether AOs at schools that don’t require all AP scores would conclude that the student scored low, but such a conclusion is, frankly, unwarranted given the current exam cost.
I’d agree but @Mwfan1921 reads apps and has stated in the past that it’s not necessarily the case.
To me, it’s crazy to take an AP without the test - but there are financial issues at play that i’m not accustomed to.
Personally I like the requirments.
I think in general, standardized test requirements in turn need serious contextual evaluation in order to avoid further advantaging the already advantaged.
And I am sure Stanford intends to do just that, evaluate your AP results in context. But whether they really manage to avoid any advantaging of the advantaged remains TBD.
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There are a number of reasons a student might not take an AP test despite taking an AP class. My daughter took a few AP classes but never took any of the tests. First, it’s expensive. Especially to take multiple tests. We don’t qualify for need-based aid for the tests, but also would be tough for us to pay full price for multiple tests. OK, you may say, then just take one of them. We could have afforded that, but here’s a second reason someone might not take an AP test: I refuse to give the College Board my money. I am anti-College Board and I hate how much money they are making off of high school students, despite technically being a non-profit org. It feels dishonest an unethical to me. I realize many do not share that feeling, but that is my feeling. I will not reward them with my business. A third reason is general skepticism towards “high stakes testing.” I am personally a skeptic both because I do not believe a single test accurately assesses learning, but I also don’t believe that AP tests capture skill-development and by this I mean that they do not truly reflect college-equivalent skills. College classes are, generally, not as simple a single, timed knowledge-based test. They involve discussion, reflective assignments, and in many cases, an original research paper. How does an AP test capture any of that and, if it fails to capture that, how can it replace an actual college class should AP credit be awarded? I realize this varies by subject - Calc and Physics are not the same as history and English in this sense. So your mileage may vary. I absolutely would not want my child to AP out of core college classes for that reason, however, and I have seen first hand the results - students who did well on the AP English exam, for example, who arrive at college, do not have to take freshman comp due to their AP score, but who are actually unable to write themselves out of a coherent paragraph. No thanks.
This is all just my personal opinion. Obviously others will disagree and are free to do so - I am not looking to start a debate on the topic, just wanted to point out that some people have reasons for not taking AP tests following AP classes which are not at all “crazy.”
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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Penn, Brown, CalTech, JHU, and UT-Austin to Require Standardized Testing for Admissions
I have a feeling more top schools are gonna go with this because they realized how important standardized scores are for an objective metric. It’s not like I’m going to be affected by this change in the college admission process, but I believe it’s quite fair. Colleges still maintain that students who don’t take many APs because of their environment will not be penalized. If you really think about it, those who have good AP class grades and bad AP scores are students who are in grade inflated yet privileged backgrounds who could not take full advantage of their resources. 1300 SAT from a competitive Bay Area is different from 1300 SAT from West Virginia. Competitive Bay Area students with 1300 SAT shouldn’t be not penalized, they couldn’t take advantage of the environment. *** This does not take into account things like ADHD and other disadvantages. I am pretty sure most colleges understand special circumstances, and if they don’t, they’re in the wrong.
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My kid took 12 AP classes, but 11 AP exams. The high school paid the fee for each AP exam. Kid opted to not take the AP Spanish exam because: (a) the teacher was brand new to teaching and my kid literally learned nothing new last year; and (b) policy at the high school is that if you do take the AP exam and you don’t pass it, it drops your grade in that class for the entire school year. Wasn’t worth the risk.
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Well, that’s one way to thin the herd of the >50,000 people who apply to Stanford every year.
Glad to hear it! I believe more will follow.
with this new requirement, would students need to submit a retake as well? My student took one AP in 9th grade, got a 3 in the ap test. He took the test again the following year and got a 5. Does he need to report both 3 and 5?
Yes. That’s what it means.
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Thank you for clarifying.