Anonymous wrote:There seems to be an emerging trend among the best schools to not award college credit for AP classes, even if the students scores 5 or 4 on the AP test. Instead, AP is used for what it was intended: advanced placement, rather than advanced credit. Penn and Dartmouth seem to have already adopted a policy, but are other schools considering this for the class of 2019? I would not want to send my DC to a school that doesn't give credit for AP. My first DC found that AP credit gave great flexibility to her schedule.

Not really a trend, more of a 'the way it has always been.'

Yale technically does not give college credit for AP course work, but if you have high scores (usually 5s) on a sufficient number of exams, you can accelerate and graduate from Yale in 6 or 7 semesters instead of 8. There are many obscure rules, however (such as you cannot finish in a fall term, so I don't know how you graduate in only 7 semesters unless you take one off to travel or something.

There are excellent reasons for this. At many colleges they are finding that students relying on high school APs are underprepared for more advanced classes and that the APs are really not college caliber courses. They cover a lot of material at a superficial level. Many "elite" high schools, such as Andover don't offer APs for that reason. The schools can come up with a better curriculum than one created by this outside company.

CalTech does not give credit for any AP classes, if I remember correctly. (not an alum, just a parent who researched the school)

I went to Dartmouth well over a decade ago. If you got credit, it was for a 4 or a 5, it was an "unspecified" credit in the department in question, and if you took a course in that department you lost the credit. So you couldn't use it to replace Chem 5/6 if you had an unspecified chemisty credit nor to place out of those if you intended to take Orgo. It wasn't ultimately all the helpful. And depending on the department, some were only good for placement. So if you got a 5 on Spanish Language, you could place out of Spanish 3 and start in higher level classes, but no credit.

Which is one reason I didn't bother to take AP exams my senior year, because I knew the credits weren't really worth it if I had any intention of taking a class in that department. I guess I don't see the big deal in this case. A couple unspecified credits wouldn't do much for you anyway. I used mine to take just 2 classes a couple of terms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I applied to college 20 years ago, this was already true.

Really? Dartmouth announced their policy less than 2 years ago and it was "news?"

Well, then Dartmouth is unusual. Most of the Ivies and elite SLACs already did this. Getting credit is rare at such schools.

Interesting that some felt Dartmouth's decision to end AP credit was based on misinformation concerning peer institutions:

A proponent of the change stated:

“We are not out of step with other institutions with a deep commitment to undergraduate education in doing this. For example, Brown, Amherst, Williams, Harvard, Princeton and UPenn do not allow AP credits. Cornell and Yale do, but in reality, I’ve been told, it’s very difficult to get credit for those students.”

But it turned out that most of that statement was not true:

http://www.dartblog.com/data/2013/01/010624.php

Stanford gives credit - even for scores of 3 in some instances:

https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/ap-charts

Princeton still gives credit for AP: http://www.princeton.edu/pub/ap/table/

I think Harvard does too

At Georgia Tech 15 years ago, we didn't get credit for math and science APs. It was used for placement purposes and that's it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I applied to college 20 years ago, this was already true.

Really? Dartmouth announced their policy less than 2 years ago and it was "news?"

Well, then Dartmouth is unusual. Most of the Ivies and elite SLACs already did this. Getting credit is rare at such schools.

I went to UC Berkeley as an engineering major. No credit for any math/science APs, regardless of score.

Anonymous wrote:When I applied to college 20 years ago, this was already true.

I went to Brown 20 years ago and received only placement, no credit, for my APs (on which I had scored 5s).

Anonymous wrote:When I applied to college 20 years ago, this was already true.

Really? Dartmouth announced their policy less than 2 years ago and it was "news?"

When I applied to college 20 years ago, this was already true.

There seems to be an emerging trend among the best schools to not award college credit for AP classes, even if the students scores 5 or 4 on the AP test. Instead, AP is used for what it was intended: advanced placement, rather than advanced credit. Penn and Dartmouth seem to have already adopted a policy, but are other schools considering this for the class of 2019? I would not want to send my DC to a school that doesn't give credit for AP. My first DC found that AP credit gave great flexibility to her schedule.