AP stands for “Advanced Placement”. The name implies that junior high school students take college course work while still in high school to prepare them for college studies. The College board decides the AP courses and prepares an exam every year (May) to evaluates the students after passing through the studies.
But what exactly are AP exams? An AP exam is basically a test of all that you learn in an AP class. You will typically earn college credit if you pass the exam given at the end of the year in May. (AP tests are scored between 1 and 5, with anything above 3 considered passing.)
The College Board's Advanced Placement Program (AP) is a collaborative community of AP teachers and students, states, districts, schools, colleges, and universities committed to the daily work of developing college-level knowledge and skills. We’ve been delivering excellence in education to millions of students across the country since 1955.
The College board decides the AP courses and prepares an exam every year (May) to evaluates the students after passing through the studies. If the student is homeschooled, mostly in the United States and Canada, he/she can still participate in the AP exam; this implies that the exam does not study or school dependent.
A high Ap score can gain you college credits that will help you gain admission quickly. The credit creates a faster graduating process as you are already familiar with some of the college subjects.
Taking AP courses indicates that you are ready for college and all that it entails. For instance, if admission officers look into your transcript and see that you took AP courses with a “5” as an AP score, you will have higher admission chances.
The college board handles both the exam and the AP courses. AP courses are free to attend, but the exam is not free. It costs about $94 to take the exam.
The AP Program does not supply syllabi for AP courses. What we supply is a detailed set of expectations about what content a college-level course in that subject should cover. AP teachers design their own syllabi with these standards in mind.
All students who are willing and academically prepared to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses.
There are no formal requirements or mandatory professional development for teachers of AP courses, with the exception of teachers of AP Seminar and AP Research, who must complete a summer workshop and online training.
The College Board's Advanced Placement Program (AP) is a collaborative community of AP teachers and students, states, districts, schools, colleges, and universities committed to the daily work of developing college-level knowledge and skills. We’ve been delivering excellence in education to millions of students across the country since 1955.
AP courses are handled by the college board along with other exams. AP courses are free to enroll but to attend the exam, students are required to submit $94.
Extra study of AP courses with high school coursework may increase the workload on the student. It may affect their high school studies to get a high AP score after the yearly exam in May.
Advanced Placement is a program run by the College Board (the makers of the SAT) that allows you to take special high school courses that can earn you college credit and/or qualify you for more advanced classes when you begin college. So what are AP courses? They are designed to give you the experience of an intro-level college class ...
An AP exam is basically a test of all that you learn in an AP class. You will typically earn college credit if you pass the exam given at the end of the year in May. ( AP tests are scored between 1 and 5, with anything above 3 considered passing.)
Many colleges say that they check to see whether you took the hardest courses available to you at your school. Taking AP classes is often the best way to show that you are challenging yourself academically at your high school.
If you're homeschooled or want to take an AP test for a class your school doesn't offer, contact your local school's AP coordinator. AP tests cost $94 each. Some schools offer subsidies, and the College Board has financial aid in the form of a $32 fee reduction.
An AP class on your transcript signals stronger academic training, especially with high passing scores of 4 and 5 on the test. In particular, getting a 5 on an AP test shows that you are more advanced in a subject than 80%-90% of advanced students —which looks very impressive to colleges!
AP classes were created in the mid-1950s as a response to the widening gap between secondary school (high school) and college. A pilot program in 1952 had 11 subjects, but AP didn't officially launch until the 1956 school year, when the College Board took over and named it the College Board Advanced Placement Program.
Similarly, other schools might let you earn college credit but have limits on which AP exams they'll accept. As an example, Stanford University accepts AP credit from many science, language, and math AP courses but not any from history or English courses.
Note: Starting with the 2021 exam, Units 8–10 will no longer be tested in AP Physics 1. Units 1–7 will be represented on the AP Physics 1 Exam in approximately similar proportion to their relative weights as indicated in the course and exam description.
Build on what you learned in AP Seminar to deeply explore an academic topic, problem, or issue of individual interest. Through this exploration, you will design, plan, and conduct a year-long research based investigation to address a research question.
AP Microeconomics. Study the principles of economics that apply to the behavior of individuals within an economic system. You’ll use graphs, charts, and data to analyze, describe, and explain economic concepts.
AP courses are a set of curricula created by CollegeBoard to give students the opportunity to take college-level courses and, depending on the score a student receives on the exam, receive college credit.
While many schools offer Honors courses in addition to their standard curriculum, APs are becoming increasingly common because of the potential that comes with receiving top scores on the exams. Similar to Honors, AP courses count towards your weighted GPA, but unlike Honors, APs have a standardized exam at the end of the course.
AP courses run the length of the academic school year, with the exams hosted over the course of 2 weeks in early to mid-May.
AP courses are the perfect way for you to demonstrate your intellectual curiosity in ways that traditional high school courses cannot. They allow you to:
While many high schools around the US offer APs, there are plenty that do not, or they do not offer the full AP course roster.