Why don't colleges like self-studiers?

jimmyboy23
Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:09:38 +0000

Here’s the thing:
AP scores will not ever impact your admissions chances officially. The admissions officer will look and see that you got fives on the exams and that will give you a little bit of an edge, but nothing worth going out of your way and self studying a course.

That being said, College admissions officers are usually wary of massive self studiers. These are people who study more than one AP a year on their own. This isn’t a good thing because what they want are people who are active and engaged in their community because those are the people that will go further than a bachelor’s degree and those are the people that will represent the university better. If you self-study a course because your school doesn’t offer it and it’s the next logical progression and it’s an extension of work you’ve already then it looks good. An example of this would be studying calc BC because your school only has up to calc AB or taking physics C when you’re in a physics honors class.

What they don’t want to see is you self-study Psych, Human Geo, and Stat all in one year because then they’ll question, “This person had nothing better to do with their free time than to read 3, 1000 page textbooks”.

@ClassicRockerDad‌
A 5 doesn’t really show true mastery. In most cases the AP exams give out fives for 75% and some go as low as 60%. Trust me, I did not know one thing about economics the night before the exam. I ended up pulling an all nighter watching videos and working through the kaplan review book. I scored a five easily. Do I know much about economics? Heck, no. AP exams are decreasing in difficulty in order to allow less intelligent people the opportunity to do well. A five shows you have a solid grasp of the material, but because there are so many people who sleep through their AP classes and don’t care what they get, it makes it a lot easier to score a five.

@nerdygirlyy‌
The AP world wouldn’t do anything except make it equivalent to taking AP world in school. I wouldn’t do AP human geo. Not for admissions reasons, but because I hear it’s not very tough or interesting and it does not yield significant college credits. This is something you want to look out for is whether the credits are significant. It may be great to take calc BC but if it’s not required for your future degree then you put yourself through a lot of work for only the benefit of knowledge.