AP Exams
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Anonymous
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Do you have to report the scores once you take the tests?
Will a non perfect score hurt your application? |
Anonymous
| No, you do not have to report the scores unless you want to. It’s self-reported on the common app and most kids only report 4’s and 5’s. You send the official report after you are admitted and committed to a school so you can receive college credit etc. There are a handful of colleges that require all scores but it’s very few. |
Anonymous
| We did not find that actually taking the test made a difference for admissions purposes. For some classes my kids did not take the exam. Reasons included quality of instruction and the need to self study bc material was not being covered in class, exhaustion at end of the year etc. For some they did and it was nice to earn some credits. But for admissions purposes we found that strong grades - straight As in all of their classes including the APs, and high ACTs plus all of the usual (great LORs and ECs and essays) meant they did well in admissions to a top 15 and a top 20 ( reported all AP and ACT scores but agree only report 4s and 5s). I’m sure others will disagree but this was our experience past two cycles |
Anonymous
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Our HS school requires that kids take the exams which I think is fair given that the kids get a GPA bump for taking those classes. Learning to study for exams are part of the college preparation process and a big reason to take APs in the first place. The college counselors submit an academic profile of the school that includes details like AP exams are required, no APs allowed freshman year, etc.
DS applied to a handful of schools and all required he report his AP exam scores. His college has very clear guidance on what scores are needed to place into higher sections of classes and none of the AP classes count toward credits for graduation. |
Anonymous
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AP scores can be helpful for admissions. Cal is now openly considering them in making admissions decisions: https://admissions.berkeley.edu/apply-to-berkeley/freshmen/freshmen-requirements/ (last bullet point in the “selection” section). Yale, NYU, and Rochester will accept AP scores in lieu of SAT scores.
That said, I have no reason to believe that not submitting AP scores hurts if you are able to submit some other score (such as SAT or ACT). |
Anonymous
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Thanks. My question really is: if kid takes the AP exam and gets a 2 on one subject and a 5 on another, does the school see the 2 if you report the 5?
Do you have to even disclose that you took the exam that you got a 2 for? |
Anonymous
It entirely depends on the policy of the college to which your kid is applying. Georgetown and Oxbridge want to see everything, don't like retakes and will check with College Board if they think someone is with-holding scores, and if they are, the application goes in the trash. |
Anonymous
As long as you DON'T choose the free option to automatically send scores (as soon as they are available) to a certain set of schools - then the process is that you log in any pay for test scores to be sent to specific school. You can also choose which scores to send and where to send them. We only had to do this after choosing to attend the college. Before that - all our DCs scores were self reported. (Including places like Oxbridge/Georgetown listed by others above) There are a few schools that require you to send all scores - but I'm not sure how that is even monitored when it comes to AP? I do think there were schools that required ACT/SAT to send official scores as part of the (pre-decision) admissions process - where there was a note saying the school would want all scores to be sent. But I don't think this sort of "prompt message" happened for AP also. I could be wrong. |
Anonymous
No, most colleges require self-reporting of scores until you are admitted. |
Anonymous
When you send official scores, the college will see all the scores. However you can request certain scores to be removed and has to be done by writing and takes some time. |
Anonymous
Most schools don’t require the official score report until after you e been admitted and enrolled, and then scores are only needed to confirm self-reported scores and/or if you are trying to get credit or placement for them. They don’t care if there’s a 2 for one AP and a 4 for another. They give credit/placement for the 4 and ignore the 2. The student is already in. No need to pay extra to scrub low scores. Obviously different if you are sending an official score report as part of your application, but very few schools ask for that. |
Anonymous
This is not true if you forgo "the free scores sent the summer after the test." If you wait until senior spring/summer to send the scores to the school you were admitted to - you can choose exactly which ones to send and which ones not to send. This option costs money to send the scores. But again, you choose which ones get sent. |
Anonymous
For example - even at Georgetown - when you are ordering scores to be sent in May of senior year - there is zero need for you to send your AP US History score because they don't accept any credit for it. That score can be left off the official report by simply NOT selecting it as a score to be sent. The same could be done for a "2" that you didn't report. |