-AP Gov and Politics, scored 4
-AP Comparative Gov
-AP Lang and Comp
-AP Enviromental Science
-AP Macroeconomics
-AP Psychology
-AP US HIstory
-AP Literature and Comp
-AP Computer Science Princ
-AP Microeconomics
-AP Statistics
-AP Spanish lang (self-studying)
I left out AP World, and AP Geo because I was told that they don’t offer useful credit? Is that true?
PoliSci is top-5 major (in terms of popularity) that is typically in the Arts & Sciences school of a university. That means that 1) there is rarely a barrier to entry / it is rarely (if ever) over-subscribed, so no problem getting in and 2) it is pretty strong in most colleges.
How many credits you will actually be allowed to apply towards graduation varies by college, with state universities the most likely to give you the most credit and selective privates the least likely to give you very many credits. How many courses you will be allowed to apply towards skipping entry level classes is also college by college.
Here’s a more important question for you: why do you want to study polisci? Most of the usual pathways involve (expensive) graduate school. Because polisci programs tend to be pretty strong most places, unless your family will pay for all of both undergrad (no UG debt) and grad school, you double check your ‘dream’ schools against your budget. IMO at least 3 of the schools on your dream list are not worth full price for polisci even if you can afford it, and are definitely not worth any debt for polisci.
At Colgate, credit for APs is capped at 6 classes and is dependent on the specific scores for each exam. Only one exam gets credit for a 3 (Calc BC) and everything else needs to be a 4 or 5. Most on your list do not receive credit at all.
Students are not admitted by major there so no advantage/disadvantage in terms of acceptance for certain programs. Colgate is a reach for the vast majority of applicants because there are more qualified applicants than space. You should also know the class of 2025 is over enrolled by a few hundred students so likely acceptance rates will drop for the next 2 years until the class size has a chance to level out.
It’s a real dilemma as you should take a rigorous courseload to strengthen your application to Penn, but you are unlikely to receive much college credit for doing so. You may get credit and/or a waiver of prerequisites for econ (micro & macro), psych, and Spanish. Review Penn’s credit policy here: Penn External Exam Credit.
That is a lot of AP classes. I think that having a moderate number of APs and very good grades will get you into many of the schools on your list.
One daughter did get accepted to Northeastern with fewer APs that you are planning to take (roughly half), but with very good grades. It would have been full pay for us which was not affordable. Some of the APs that she did take were a lot of work. Taking more might have made it tougher to get nearly all A’s.
Our other daughter self-studied for AP Spanish. It was quite difficult finding anywhere that would let her take the AP exam. Eventually we were able to find somewhere and she did well on it.
I am not sure whether “Boston” means Boston University or Boston College, although I doubt that the answer will matter in terms of whether you are taking too many or the right number of AP classes.
Either you are out of state for UMD, or you are out of state for UCLA and UCB, or you are out of state for all of the above. Whether you are in-state or out of state will impact your chances at these schools and the cost of attendance.
If you are planning on studying political science, then you are probably going to need some form of graduate school. Either law school or a master’s program (or an MD, although that seems less likely after a poli sci degree) would cost money. Therefore you should be budgeting for more than four years of university. I agree with the comment that you should not take on any debt at all to get a bachelor’s degree in political science.
I think that you should take fewer APs, and focus on the classes that you are most interested in. Be aware that some of the APs that you have listed involved a great deal of reading. It would be tough to take two of these at the same time.