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[quote=Anonymous]I'd be very interested in seeing the data. I'm not sure how'd you quantify it though. The college acceptance environment has been very dynamic regardless of a few private schools dropping AP classes. It's far more competitive and unpredictable than it was ten years ago. But I think schools that dropped APs are likely experiencing poorer outcomes.

Now that most schools are test optional, GPA and class rigor are much more important. Some public universities like UCLA and Berkeley are getting more than 125,000 applicants per year. And most of those applicants are going to be quite good students with numerous APs and a GPA that reflects that. I don't see how a bright kid with no APs and a 3.7 from faraway GDS is even remotely competitive in an environment where there are tens of thousands of applicants with a dozen APs and a 4.7 GPA. You are assuming a level of expertise at the particular situation at GDS or whatever private that is not going to happen among readers who are working through thousands of applications from all over the country. And that will be the norm at almost every large competitive university in the US. I'm sure it's different at LACs where they know GDS and have a long relationship. But for the large selective universities, it's got to hurt. It's an immediate disadvantage. First appearances matter - and the first appearance will be comparatively weak class rigor and low GPA.

There will be similar problems applying to schools in Canada and Europe. The entire application for McGill or University of Toronto or LSE are numbers. You either have the minimum GPA, SAT/ACT, and AP scores or you do not. Whether you went to public or private doesn't matter. They are not nuanced applications.

Also the lack of APs in certain private schools probably particularly hurts the STEM kids the most. For those that want to do engineering or computers science, colleges want to know whether the student can handle or is grounded in AP Calculus BC, AP Multivariable, AP Physics and so on. Whether a private school student can manage a 5 in French language and literature is much less important than do they demonstrate competence in fundamental STEM classes, which are nearly always AP classes, particularly calculus BC. I'd bet a nickel that the magnet schools and the good publics are placing significantly more kids at elite STEM schools like MIT and elsewhere compared to the privates that dropped AP classes.[/quote]

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