Im currently a junior about to become a senior (in less than a month )
Ever since junior year, I’ve received A’s in English because teachers at my school just do not teach anything at all and so I feel extremely unprepared for the AP test. Furthermore, the AP Lit test for seniors builds upon the literature that we read during this year but I feel like I don’t truly understand the books all that well.
I also find it to be a drag to read. We’ve been taking practice AP multiple choice tests in class and my eyes feel like they’re benching 1000 pounds of weights or something - it’s extremely hard to stay awake. The only reason why I’m considering AP Lit next year is because I’m scared that it may ruin my chances at the colleges that I want to attend. Adcom might see it as a big, fat, giant, red F on my transcript if I drop a class that I’m doing well in.
I have a strong…dislike… for the concepts that encompass that subject of education and I’m hoping to stay as far away from it as possible… :-"
I plan on majoring under one of the engineering disciplines or something related to science and my dream schools include: UCLA, USC (I know, what is this monstrosity? A trojan-lover and a bruin-lover in one body??) and Stanford. If I don’t make it into any of those, which I would be surprised if I make it into any, I play on attending my state university.
TL; DR: Will dropping AP English be a large determining factor in my college application?
Nope. If you are not planning to focus on English or related humanities, you can skip it without a problem. You don’t need to take every AP and you don’t need to take a particular class just because most people do. Take some advanced classes in areas you want to pursue.
Be sure to talk to your parents about what they will contribute for your college costs before you make your application list. Run net price calculators on college web sites to get financial aid estimates. If you are not a California resident, UCLA will be expensive without financial aid.
Yes I know about the costs of the UC schools, especially since the give almost no financial aid. For now, Im just looking at schools I’m interested in, I plan to worry on the cost after I’ve chosen maybe my top 8 then Ill cut out the most expensive schools.
My kid took AP Eng Language as a junior -scored a 5 - did NOT take AP Eng Lit senior year - and was admitted to NU engineering. So it can be done… good luck to you. As lostaccount points out - take the courses YOU want to take.
DO NOT make a list of your “top 8 schools” and then cut them… Run the NPC on UCLA, USC, one match, and one safety, bring the results to your parents and see what they say. THEN start your list.
Wow, OP you started off with a question about AP Lit and lucked out by getting some apparently very needed advice.
As noted, start with informing yourself about 1) financial aid, merit aid and YOUR family’s income, asking your parents their expectations about how much they can pay and 2) how to put together a list of safeties, matches and reaches and 3) start with the safeties – they are much much harder to come up with!
Not taking AP English will have almost no impact on your chances of admission to college.
Declaring that you find reading to be “a drag,” on the other hand, has huge implications for your potential success & happiness with university studies. Just what is it you imagine university students do all day long? And why would you want to torture yourself by entering a career in which you essentially spend 90% of your professional time doing something you despise?
My parents and I have already discussed the issue with paying for college. This will probably sound ridiculous but I’m not too interested in going to the east coast or any other schools besides what I listed. I don’t have a problem with my safeties because they are the colleges in-state.
As for the reading, yes, I do despise it but but it only applies to the reading poetry or old English or trying to understand the effect of some sort of rhetorical device on the passage as a whole. When I read, I read for fun or to learn about something I enjoy.
Oh, I see. Without context, it sounded like you despise reading as a whole. It’s perfectly fine to decide that some content (Middle-English poetry, or C++ manuals for that matter) is not to your taste. I’m just constantly worried by the number of students we accept that don’t seem to understand that a university education is all about getting into a job where you will do nothing but read & write, all day, every day, for the rest of your life (whether that’s Incan hieroglyphics or IEEE transactions).
For the record, I’m never terribly happy with students who show up to college thinking that the AP courses they have taken in high school somehow substitute for university-level work. You will likely be happier, and better prepared for your upper-division classes, if you take all the lower-division breadth requirements you can, and don’t try to skip out of them using AP credit anyway. Best of luck!
I wouldn’t say it’s a huge factor admissions wise, but imo English is one of the easier AP exams, and if you can pass the exam for college credit while you’re still in high school, you’ll save a lot of time and effort you would’ve spent at college.
No. Take what you need to take to be who you are. My boy took AP Lang his 11th grade year, but an online regular 12th grade course his senior year due to scheduling issues. At his state flagship university, the AP Lit on top of AP Lang may have gained him elective credit, but nothing more. AP Lit would have increased his high school GPA & possibly class rank due to the weighted stance, but at the expense of German and probably band - sacrificing band would have cost him his leadership roles - and his rank as-was was top 7%, so… Granted, he wasn’t gunning for Ivys or similar, but I wouldn’t have argued with his course selection even if he were.
Just make sure your GC can check off “most rigorous” classes without AP Lit. That is a problem I am having with ours, he is not sure if he can but we have few APs.
Hm yea that was what I was scared of at first but I think I will be fine. I have 6 classes so far and then I’m going to have 4 more next year without English so that will be a total of 10 AP classes taken. I’m on the fence about another AP class so possibly 11. Plus, I skipped a couple levels of different subjects so there’s that too.
As for you and your son, good luck! Few APs is better than no APs.
I would ask him or her. I would find a schedule based reason why you cannot do AP Lit (saying the books bore you will not work but saying it interferes with AP Comp Sci or whatever may.) That was how my older one got out of it and while she did not apply to any CA schools other than Stanford (rejected), she got into a number of Top 25 and at least one Top 10 school.
I do not agree with this automatically. When I went to college, I had a few AP scores that were allowed to fulfill a few requirements. Where applicable, I did fine in more advanced courses without repeating the AP credit. The fulfilling of some requirements with AP credit allowed me to take additional free electives – a better use of my time in college than repeating the material I already learned while in high school.
I do suggest now that if students with AP credit want to take a more advanced course in the subject that they try the college’s old final exams of the course that they are considering skipping, so that they can check their knowledge against the college’s expectations.
You only need 6-8Ap’s total so don’t worry in terms of quantity. As was mentioned upthread, what you need is a good balance, not quantity.
There’s a difference between using AP to skip a level already covered to take a class at the appropriate level, and skipping altogether an entire area of knowledge.
Is AP Lit, in and of itself necessary for elite admission? Regardless of how many other APs taken?
@MYOS1634 what happens if you are at a school that only offers 3 or 4 APs junior year and then only 3 or 4 total senior year (it is a little more than that but they are mutually exclusive, eg you can only take AB Calc or BC Calc not both since they are at the same time). In that circumstance when you have taken AP Comp, and AP Lit would be your 5 or 6th AP do you have to take it? 5 or 6 APs total is considered a lot at the school due to some mandatory other unrelated classes, however the GC keeps insisting despite other APs taken including AP Comp, that AP Lit is considered necessary for elite colleges? He will not put most rigorous without it but he will listen to reason. Suggestions?
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