Reply to AP Testing Still a Thing at Sidwell/GDS/Maret/Potomac/St Albans/NCS?

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Reply to "AP Testing Still a Thing at Sidwell/GDS/Maret/Potomac/St Albans/NCS?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I thought UC schools also give a GPA bump for Honors courses. [/quote]

“Nonresidents:

UC will grant honors weight for AP or IB courses and transferable college courses only, but not for school-designated honors courses. The weight is given to letter grades of A, B, or C.”[/quote]

Why didn't my kid's school tell me about this? Kid is in one of the top 3. Asked college office multiple times whether kids should take AP tests and was told "no, unless UK is your plan" - now I find out that UC schools do bump GPAs for this. For the amount of money we pay for these schools, it would be nice if someone in college office could give an accurate answer that reflects the full picture given how many kids from the DC schools that dropped AP classes apply to the UC system

The college advising experience so far at our school (Big 3) has seemed like a bunch of nice nice talk, everything geared towards the middle kids, and especially geared at not painting full picture to protect us and kid from any stress. I'd much rather they tell parents and kids the truth and how to work the reality of hard admissions where you are judged against a NATIONAL pool of kids.

This AP test thing is but one example. I'm sure a chorus of "rich parent complaining blah blah" will now start in reply to this post

BTW One can look to see admit rates at UC's by high school - https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/admissions-source-school
For class starting Fall '21

Wilson HS (where AP courses are taught): 54 applied; 39 got in (UC wide) - 72%
Sidwell: 28 applied; 17 got in - 60%
GDS: 30 applied; 16 got in - 53%
NCS: 15 applied; 6 got in - 40%

Of course not all UC's are the same. But if your computed GPA is goosed by AP classes and the kid took a bunch of  honors courses that would have easily allowed sitting for the AP, I'm honestly shocked that this school (a big 3) didnt tell parents - i was on multiple zooms with college office where this question about AP was explicitly asked and it was always denied to help other than UK admit process. What utter bs

[/quote]

This is a very cool data source. But I think you need to break it out by campus for it to be meaningful. Wilson was 13/13 at UC Davis but most private schools barely had any applicants. At a statistical level, public school families are looking for value and private school families are looking for prestige. Outside of Cal and UCLA, the UC schools offer more value than prestige.

Also your school was correct that taking the exam wouldn’t make any difference. The bump is for the grade in an official AP course, not for the score on the exam. (I’m not saying that policy makes sense, just that’s what it is.)[/quote]

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