High school students face enormous stress and pressure to appear at their best when applying to different colleges and universities. They must develop portfolios showing that, in addition to good grades and the essays written for admission, they have participated in extracurricular activities, given time to various charities and causes, and developed talents outside of their academic studies.
Many colleges also want students to have taken Advanced Placement examinations.
Many colleges also want students to have taken Advanced Placement examinations.
While intimidating, such exams offer homeschoolers great opportunities to strut their academic prowess. Like the SAT or the ACT, these tests reveal where such students stand academically in relation to their peers. An admissions officer suspicious of a homeschool transcript glittering with As cannot help but be impressed by a student who has scored a 4 or a 5 on several AP tests. For all students, homeschooled or otherwise, AP scores add weight and gravity to any school record.
To make the most of these tests, home-educated students need to be aware they are playing a game, a contest driven both by rules and strategy, some of them not so clear to the casual observer. Here are some points to that game to keep in mind.
Before you crack open those books, you must locate a public or private school that will allow you to take the test with its students. Unlike the SAT, schools are not obliged to seat outsiders for AP exams. Some will want to charge you an extra fee for taking the test at their facility. For the students I once taught I arranged their testing through a local public high school, which charged them $15 extra, a fee that seemed reasonable to me. (One private school wanted to charge my students $300.)
Next comes strategy.
If you feel fully prepared, you might try an AP test in your sophomore year of high school. If the test demands written essays, I would recommend against taking it as a sophomore. In that extra year, both your writing and your critical thinking skills will develop more than you can imagine.
Your junior year of high school is the ideal time to take Advanced Placement tests if you want the colleges to use your score as a point for your admission. You will take the tests in May, receive the scores back in July, and so have them available for your transcript in the fall when you begin applying for admission. Be sure, if you earn the qualifying grade of 3 or above, to list the course on your transcript as Advanced Placement.
And if you don’t do well? Then don’t send the scores to the college. Make no mention of them. List the course on your transcript as an honors course. Keep track of the books you used, the number of essays you wrote, the number of hours you spent studying. If you have a tutor, ask that person to write either a letter of recommendation for you or a brief summary of what you studied while preparing for the AP exams.
If you are taking AP exams during your senior year, you need to be aware that the scores will do nothing to help you get into college the following fall. You won’t receive the scores until long after the college has accepted you.
But there are still advantages for taking the tests in the senior year. First, if you do well enough, you may earn credit for a freshman course, saving thousands of dollars in tuition. Know that each department of a university sets the score needed to receive that credit. You can find out that information from the college and decide, for example, whether you should take the AP English Literature and Composition test if no credit is given for a score under a 5.
A second advantage of taking an AP course your senior year is that you can list that course as such on your application. The college has no way of knowing your score until long after your acceptance. A poor performance on the exam cannot then count against you.
Preparation for the AP courses demands hard work, but help is available. You can check out the online syllabi and tips for AP courses at https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/home. You should buy at least one of the study guides for these exams offered by publishers like Barron’s. You can search out online classes or a tutor. You can form AP study groups with like-minded, ambitious friends.
Songwriter Steve Forbert once wrote a song “You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play.”
Join the game. Play hard.
And play smart.
To make the most of these tests, home-educated students need to be aware they are playing a game, a contest driven both by rules and strategy, some of them not so clear to the casual observer. Here are some points to that game to keep in mind.
Before you crack open those books, you must locate a public or private school that will allow you to take the test with its students. Unlike the SAT, schools are not obliged to seat outsiders for AP exams. Some will want to charge you an extra fee for taking the test at their facility. For the students I once taught I arranged their testing through a local public high school, which charged them $15 extra, a fee that seemed reasonable to me. (One private school wanted to charge my students $300.)
Next comes strategy.
If you feel fully prepared, you might try an AP test in your sophomore year of high school. If the test demands written essays, I would recommend against taking it as a sophomore. In that extra year, both your writing and your critical thinking skills will develop more than you can imagine.
Your junior year of high school is the ideal time to take Advanced Placement tests if you want the colleges to use your score as a point for your admission. You will take the tests in May, receive the scores back in July, and so have them available for your transcript in the fall when you begin applying for admission. Be sure, if you earn the qualifying grade of 3 or above, to list the course on your transcript as Advanced Placement.
And if you don’t do well? Then don’t send the scores to the college. Make no mention of them. List the course on your transcript as an honors course. Keep track of the books you used, the number of essays you wrote, the number of hours you spent studying. If you have a tutor, ask that person to write either a letter of recommendation for you or a brief summary of what you studied while preparing for the AP exams.
If you are taking AP exams during your senior year, you need to be aware that the scores will do nothing to help you get into college the following fall. You won’t receive the scores until long after the college has accepted you.
But there are still advantages for taking the tests in the senior year. First, if you do well enough, you may earn credit for a freshman course, saving thousands of dollars in tuition. Know that each department of a university sets the score needed to receive that credit. You can find out that information from the college and decide, for example, whether you should take the AP English Literature and Composition test if no credit is given for a score under a 5.
A second advantage of taking an AP course your senior year is that you can list that course as such on your application. The college has no way of knowing your score until long after your acceptance. A poor performance on the exam cannot then count against you.
Preparation for the AP courses demands hard work, but help is available. You can check out the online syllabi and tips for AP courses at https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/home. You should buy at least one of the study guides for these exams offered by publishers like Barron’s. You can search out online classes or a tutor. You can form AP study groups with like-minded, ambitious friends.
Songwriter Steve Forbert once wrote a song “You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play.”
Join the game. Play hard.
And play smart.
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