Michigan no longer considering AP scores
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
But they want the A student who got a 2 on the AP? That's not great critical thinking. Obviously the A student had grade inflation and the B student had grade deflation. |
Anonymous
Sorry, I grew up in Michigan too, and I won't be crying for Detroit Country Day or International Academy kids. |
Anonymous
T25 school. A > B You're welcome |
Anonymous
|
Pre-covid, 25% of Michgan's class had below a 1340 on the SAT. That is not a bad score, but to put it in perspective
NEU's 1430-1540 Vandy 1470-1570 WashU 1480-1560 Emory 1400-1510 Highly selective privates don't have to admit students based on equity. Michigan has never cared that much about SAT's, certainly as much as privates. That isn't going to change. Michigan's mission is just different. Of course, since SAT is correlated with how a student does in college (Harvard, Yale, the UC senate report, NY Times articles, etc.) you will see a shift of some top students away from Michigan as it pursues a more equitably driven focus. |
Anonymous
Where are these top students going to go that's not pursuing "a more equitably-driven focus"? NEU, Vandy, Wash U, Emory? https://diversity.northeastern.edu/ https://www.vanderbilt.edu/diversity/ https://equity.wustl.edu/ https://www.emory.edu/home/explore/life/diversity-inclusion.html How do we know that parents and children don't want/expect U of M to have that focus? We are talking about a school JFK chose to announce the creation of the Peace Corps! Anyway, the other thing that's obvious is that Michigan has been heavy on high-scoring OOS rich kids for years...I don't see anything about the current crazy admissions conditions that's going to reverse that trend. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/public-university-wealthy-admissions/675009/ "The richest and poorest students from Michigan get into Michigan at similar rates, controlling for test scores. For out-of-state students, however, there’s a marked lean toward the rich. Again, this works differently than it does at elite private universities. In the Ivy Plus schools, the pro-wealth bias is accomplished with a witches’ brew of legacy preferences, admissions bumps for patrician sports such as squash and sailing, and outright pay-to-play arrangements for mega-donors. At public universities, it’s a more straightforward downstream effect of pricing. Most out-of-state students get little or no financial aid, so only the rich can afford to enroll." My personal feeling is that the added AP score information is just not all that relevant, and encouraging the collection of it creates extra expense for applicants, creates more data clutter, and promotes "arms race" behavior like self-studying of AP course material just to take tests just to get scores for applications. If you look at what Michigan will give you credit for, and read some threads about enrolled people who went back and had AP credits taken off their transcripts for logical reasons, you'll see that it's not worth much time or money to bring a huge AP background to Michigan. They want to educate you on-site. Because that's their mission. If that interrupts someone's "my kid graduated in 3 years thanks to his 13 APs" arms race, oh well. |
Anonymous
Whether Michigan considers AP scores for admission has nothing to do with whether AP credit helps you once you get there. It actually does and could allow you to graduate early if that’s what you want. Michigan accepts a lot of AP credit, unlike some private schools that accept none or a limited amount. The reason that a UM student might decline AP credit is because UM increases tuition for upperclassmen. So, if you’re planning on staying for 4 years, you don’t want to hit the credit threshold for higher tuition earlier than junior year because of AP credits and therefore decline some. You can decline your sophomore year, you don’t have to do it straight off. |
Anonymous
Critical thinking matters. If you get an A but a 2 on the AP exam, you clearly haven't mastered the material at a college level. If you get a B but a 5, you have mastered the material at a college level, but clearly the high school course was VERY rigorous. Ergo... (I am not sure why this is difficult to understand or why it has to be spelled out) |
Anonymous
Now look at in state SAT/ACT versus out of state SAT/ACT. The OOS applicants were, and are, much closer to the schools you cite. |
Anonymous
PP. I do understand the above. My kid is already admitted. The impact of the credits just doesn't look all that useful to me, and we've been considering their value every year at class-picking and AP test-paying time. I am in the camp of the people who think AP is mainly Educational Testing Service's revenue replacement racket. I will have my kid pick up the ones he is qualified for but to me they are just insurance against dropping a class or falling short of total required credits to graduate. My point is that, I don't think U of M is very pro giving meaningful credit. Yes they have a whole table of equivalencies. But having generic 3 credits of X in a department isn't very valuable. And when I talk to people who had weed-out majors at tough schools they comment that AP class kids who waived the equivalent of classes like Calc BC in college often get their butts kicked when they join the 2nd level classes. So in some cases, taking APs to get ahead in college can really backfire. AP classes just don't prep kids as well as the AP advocates claim. So back to the point on admissions impact. It's a lot harder to compare across random sets of AP scores than it is just to look at SATs and ACTs. The kids who can get a string of 5s are probably quite easy to admit or not based on other parts of their application. And if we're going to the "equity" place, it's hard for school districts to find the teachers and student cohorts and money to supply 10s of AP classes as seem to be normal in the DMV's better high schools. So, APs probably don't offer much extra value as admission decision inputs. That's what I wanted to agree with/support by making my comments. I think this policy change is a non-event. |
Anonymous
Gosh I had no idea. 
|
Anonymous
The role of AP scores is to suss out the learning behind GPAs and help spot grade inflation and deflation. |
Anonymous
Clearly they don’t think it matters. I suspect if their institutional research showed that lower AP test scores correlated with higher drop-out rates or lower grades in college, they wouldn’t have made this move. It’s worth considering that they might know more than you do about this! |
Anonymous
Yup and remember that Michigan is only about 50% in-state. |
Anonymous
| The people who don't want AP scores to be reported or counted have high GPAs in grade inflated schools. |
Anonymous
I disagree with the premise about test scores revealing learning in the class that relates to grade inflation/deflation. One of the things I've noticed on this board is that more people on DCUM talk about their kids studying/prepping for the APs. Even about self-studying without taking the class as an enrolled student. I didn't even know that was a thing until I came to this board. In my area, kids don't seem to treat studying for the APs with any more seriousness than a midterm. Lol, it's no surprise to me that I read about a lot of 5s on this board and locally most kids are getting 3s. I don't think it's an aptitude difference...more of cultural norms. We are still behind the times with respect to the rat race pressure aspect. So people don't cram as much or care as much. Which seems acceptably realistic to me given the relatively low rewards for outperforming in this specific area of college prep. |