<p>would it be bad for me to do this? I read a princeton review book and it said not to do this, but i’m doing this because my school does really poorly on AP tests. By taking it at a college i am basically guaranteeing college credit. So should i go on and take it at college? And will UCLA admission officers care that i’m taking a course offered at my high school? thanks.</p>
<p>If money is an issue, take a few CC classes (go to <a href=“http://www.assist.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.assist.org</a> to find out if they transfer). </p>
<p>APs > CC classes in the college admissions process generally
If you’re aiming for private schools - don’t take CC classes. </p>
<p>If your school does poorly on the AP tests, self-study a lot and excel. You can do it. </p>
<p>If you just want college credit - it’s fine. Don’t do too many and do bad though - balance! </p>
<p>Yes, of course if you can weave it in with your story involving poor AP exams especially. All the best!</p>
<p>pros: you can sometimes get rid of ges, especially science ones</p>
<p>cons: counts toward your unit cap</p>
<p>thus, try not to take any course that would not fulfill some requirement at ucla since it will hurt you if you do. </p>
<p>i took several programming courses, but guess what, it does not convert into any ucla courses, but it still counts toward my unit cap, which limits my ability to double major.</p>
<p>If you dont want units for certain AP tests you need to talk to your counselor right? I want to take away the ones that I don’t need so that they don’t go toward the unit cap.</p>
<p>That’s not true. How many units will you come in with AP exams? What’s your major? GEs? University Requirements, etc.? I think you’ll be OK. In the worst case scenario, you would talk to Murphy Hall and petition for more units. With careful planning, though, you can make the situation less drastic. Have you looked at the AP credit policies? You can figure out which exams will give you credit - empty units or bypassing courses.</p>
<p>Well, I took a lot of AP classes… I would be going in with around 70 units! And I’m a biochem major so I’ll probably use a lot of units. The only one I’m really using though is the math from BC to get out of 31A and B.</p>
<p>APs are fine. They do not count towards the unit cap. Only community college courses do.</p>
<p>can someone explain to me what unit caps are?</p>
<p>Unit caps within a quarter = max # of units you can take w/o petitioning for more
Unit cap overall: max # of units allowed @ ucla over your 4 years; you can petition for more…</p>
<p>so why would it be bad to have it count towards your unit cap. Doesn’t that decrease the amount of classes i need to take?</p>
<p>You still need to take a certain amount of classes for your major. And if you’re double majoring, you’re going to be taking up a lot of units anyway. It’s in your best interest then to start out with only units that will count toward your major.</p>
<p>The unit cap isn’t the min. amount of units you have to take. The problem is if you need to take more units than the cap.</p>
<p>thanks everyone. two more questions. if i plan on a math/science major, would it be bad to take a college course such as phsychology or physiology? And would it be ok to take calculus at the college or should i take it as an AP course?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.assist.org%5B/url%5D”>www.assist.org</a> to see how cc classes would transfer to ucla
physiology is more for life science majors and would mostly help for one of the ls courses. that and there probably exists discrepancies between the courses taught and how much memorization you would need to do. would you like to jeopardize your grades to look better? you can be safe with taking APs at your school and studying hard for those as opposed to the 2 midterms and 1 final exam mentality of a college course this early in your career.</p>
<p>I was in a similar predicament when I was in high school - stay at the school and take limited APs, or go to Community College and take classes. I was really concerned about making the best decision not only because of what would transfer but because what would look best on the admissions application. I ultimately decided to take CC classes and it ended up being by far the best decision.</p>
<p>Taking CC classes does NOT reflect poorly on admissions applications. This was something a lot of people warned be about but after talking to people in admissions offices I found this to be otherwise. I took 6 CC classes my senior year and no APs and got into UCLA, Berkeley and Cornell. My sister did the same thing and got into Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. </p>
<p>Like other people said, be careful to take classes that will transfer. I used assist.org and was able to get rid of a bunch of GE classes at UCLA (Psych 10, Stats 10, Anthro 8, English 4w, Philosophy 10, and Astro 3). Sure, it counts towards your unit cap, but I entered in UCLA with a bunch of classes done, and now I’m set to graduate early with a double major, saving my parents money. Even if you run into the unit cap, they almost always approve petitions to go over as long as you graduate on time.</p>
<p>Anyway, hope that helps.</p>
<p>Look at various admissions site or even call the admissions office at whatever university you’re interested in. Sure, nobleguy05 had a good experience with it - how many APs were at his school anyway?
For example, the rigor of a course at your general CC doesn’t compare to the more elite private schools (e.g Swarthmore et al.) Look at Harvard’s admissions policies - there is even hesitance about accepting specific scores. They dilute the person’s actual college education since well. How accurate is the AP exam in consolidating your knowledge in that respected class and finally as a predictor for success in its representative class at XYZ university anyway? </p>
<p>In short, call the actual admissions offices of XYZ university (especially if you’re more concerned with the top tier schools). Get it from the horse’s mouth. CC courses are so variable across schools; APs are standardized and show how you perform relative to others. Policies involving CC courses and UC schools are slightly different I imagine given the nature and relationship of California Community Colleges and University of California (as opposed to private institutions who are already wary of accepting credit from AP exams whose preparation for the exam, I would argue, is not comparable to a typically designated college course from the upper echelon and whose topics covered hardly parallel firstly, a typical syllabus, and secondly the nuances involved with the institution and and at a more microscopic level, the professor or instructor).</p>