How much tuiton money can one save with AP credits? Can we calculate it using the college’s cost per credit? Like if the cost per credit is $1200, and if one covers 9 credits using my AP test, will I get a refund of $10,800? Or maybe is that how it works? If it’s a meet need college, will the college refund the tuiton money to the student’s account?
You will not get a “refund” for AP credits. Having AP credits means you need to take fewer credits to earn your degree.
Check with the university you are planning to attend. There should be a chart that shows which APs they accept and how it translates into credits. Typically, if you achieve a certain score on the AP exam, you are exempted from taking a specific class. You “skip” that class and get credit for it, so no money ever changes hands.
You have to research each school to see their policy on this, it can get complicated. Consider talking with someone at the school to carefully understand each scenario.
Many schools have a range of credit hours per semester/quarter that are considered full-time. For example, at some schools whether you take 12, or 15, or 16 credits you may be paying the same price, and in this case it may be difficult to reap any savings if awarded credits for AP classes.
If you are looking to graduate early, even if credits are earned, you have to see if it’s possible to get all the necessary classes required to graduate in a shorter number of semesters/quarters (consider pre-reqs, when and how often courses are offered, and how competitive it is to get courses). Another consideration is financial aid and/or merit awards…if the student goes part-time, say to finish up the last semester, fin aid or merit awards may be reduced or even eliminated.
Lastly, and I expect you know this, some schools don’t give credit for AP classes, but allow a student to skip an intro class and go right to a more advanced class…in this case there would be no dollar savings.
You won’t get a cash refund because you have AP credits. If that is what you are asking…answer is no.
The best that will happen is that you have enough AP credits to graduate a semester early. There will be no cash refund but you’d have one less semester of college to pay.
It also is highly variable by college, and by major, if graduating early is possible.
My kids had lots of AP credits, but it didn’t result in them graduating early. It just got them out of certain classes & they could take things that were either upper-level or more interesting (e.g., an English elective instead of basic English).
If you can get enough credits to equal a semester’s worth of credits, you might save that much (one semester’s worth of tuition).
You may even have to pay a small admin fee per credit that you’d like to use.
If the school pays 100% of the need, then won’t it refund the money for those classes to me which I won’t have to take because of AP credits? To be frank, I’m asking if there is an opportunity here to make money out of the air? 
As the people have responded above, that’s not how it works.The only possibility for “making money out of the air” is possibly saving yourself a semester of courses. That is a substantial savings if the school allows it.
Frankly…the answer to this is NO.
But you could get a job while in college… and make some money.
Thanks everybody for clarifying