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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What is your most controversial opinion about college and the college admissions process?[/quote]

Great donut hole students in states with good public universities should only take more than about five AP classes, or any other classes beyond what the state flagship requires, if they think they’ll enjoy those classes, need those classes to get into state flagships honors programs, use those classes to meet state flagship distribution course requirements or benefit from those classes, not for the sake of private college admissions.

Some non-US universities use AP scores in the basic admissions process. It makes sense for great students to take whatever AP classes they need to take to keep non-U.S. options open.

But the reality is that, for most top-tier students, the only colleges that are a better deal than a good state flagship or flagship equivalent are about 30 private universities (maybe the University of Rochester on up) and, arguably, 30 or so liberal arts colleges, and admissions to most of those schools is a lottery. And, really, for sane, organized, cost-conscious students who can survive big weedout classes, there are only about 20 schools, at most, that have a big enough edge over UVa. or UMCP to be worth paying $40,000 per year more for them. And those schools all have lottery-like admissions. It makes no sense at all for students to have a bad time in high school for the sake of those lottery schools.

There might be hundreds of other universities and colleges that are actually worth their tuition, but most of them aren’t that selective or just aren’t worth the price differential between them and UMCP, or even between them and UMBC or George Mason, for great, focused kids.

Whitman College or Colorado College might be wonderful schools that earn their keep, but they just aren’t $40,000, or $60,000, per year better for the kinds of kids who’d get in-state tuition, honors college classes and merit aid at UMCP and have a hard time paying an extra $40,000 per year.

So, certainly, a lot of those kids are five years of more ahead of grade level. They might need AP-level classes simply to feel as if the schools aren’t insulting their intelligence.

But, if they’d find taking a lot of AP classes unpleasant, there might not be any reason for them to take any AP classes beyond, at most, the classes on the state flagship’s recommended class list. [/quote]

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