Reply to Do AP scores matter?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Do AP scores matter?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The reason they want Aps is because they want to see you are on the most toughest path.  They care about the grade.  Much much less so about the score.  Top private schools are not giving you the credit anyway.

Even here, many colleges are not requiring 10-15 APs just because they are offered.  Need to take a core group and they need to make sense to what you want to do.  [/quote]

I'm not sure where you got these ideas, but I believe you're mistaken. When a highly selective college has a choice between a student who has taken 10 AP classes and has gotten scores of 5 on most versus a student who had the same AP options to choose from and only took 5 and scored 3s and 4s (or chose not to report scores), it's going to matter regardless of the grades they got in the class.

As to private schools not giving credit, this is absolutely not true. Here's a link to Harvard's policy, which is probably similar to other highly selective schools.

https://oue.fas.harvard.edu/apexams

They offer credit for 24 AP courses. Sure, you have to score a 5, but over half of those 5s receive 8 credits toward graduation.

You're right that no college requires a specific number of AP classes, but they do look to see if the choices you've been making include opting for the most rigorous class available.

None of this means that kids should attempt to take more APs than they're capable of handling successfully. Take the highest level offered when you're motivated and can get an A or B in it without stressing yourself out too much. If that doesn't get you into one of the most selective colleges, [b]wherever you land will be able to provide the same opportunities for future success[/b]. This website has quite a bit of data that shows this to be true.....

https://lesshighschoolstress.com/
[/quote]

So I went to that website, and it's conclusion was as follows:

"At the Mayo Clinic, the percentage of students attending schools not in the MC25 was 70% for those who graduated between 1980 and 1999. For those who graduated in 2000 and after, that percentage rose to 74%.

At Skadden Arps, the same percentage rose from 60% to 64%.

At the Washington Post, it went from 56% in the 1980-1999 bracket to 66% in the new century.

At the other top law firm, the percentage rose even more dramatically from 51% to 64%."

If you take the reverse of those numbers, then wouldn't 26% of the Mayo Clinic, 36% of Skadden, 34% of WaPo and 36% of the other 'top law firm' come from their T25 schools.

The same website says that: " These 25 colleges combined can accommodate less than 11% of those in the top 10%, or around 1.1% of all students. "

Why wouldn't you reach the opposite conclusion, that in fact, going to a T25 school dramatically increases your opportunities? True, going to any school does not foreclose any opportunities, but the data doesn't seem to support the idea that you have equal chances at that opportunity.
[/quote]

You've only given a little of the data provided. The site also points out that the reason the most selective colleges have higher percentages than you might expect based on population is that they get first pick of the strongest high school students every year. My thinking is that because what you want to know is if those with high numbers who aren't admitted to one of those top 25 colleges are going to be put at a disadvantage by having to attend a less selective college, you should only be comparing that list of top 25 schools with a very small portion of the population at each of the "backups".[/quote]

Interesting. So if you take the other 8.9% of the top 10% and assume all of the non top 25 people at these places were from that group (which may or may not be reasonable) - then if the school doesn't matter (or matters very little), should you expect the ratio of non T25 to T25 to be approximately 8:1?  But in reality, it's more like 2:1 or 3:1?  [/quote]

That's a good question. I wouldn't want to be the one trying to have to figure out how to answer it. It seems like you'd need access to tons of data that would be difficult to acquire. Like the site says, though, the huge advantage those top 25 schools have is that they get first pick of most of the strongest, most ambitious high school students.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics