<p>Actually, you can use some of those AP credits in order to graduate in fewer than 8 semesters. Very few Yale students want to do that, though.</p>
<p>What you can’t do is use them to take fewer than 36 credits over 8 semesters, or to get out of distributional requirements. The only modest exception is that you can reduce (but not eliminate) the number of semesters of foreign language you have to take with a good AP score.</p>