Advanced Placement (AP) classes

/ vishalkirti

Advanced Placement (AP) is a buzzword among high school kids and their parents. This article is an effort to understand what it means and how can you benefit from it.

Advancement Placement Classes are college entry level classes which can be taken during High School. Why would you want to do that? There are lots of benefits. Listed below are some:

APClass

  • Making a major choice early-When you get to take a college level class early, you get to decide whether you like a certain area or not early. For eg. if you always wanted to be a Psychologist and you took the AP Psychology class and hated it, you will understand it better if you truly enjoy Psychology or not.
  • Increasing your High School GPA- AP Classes are graded on the scale of 5 and High School GPA is on the scale of 4. Hence, if you get an “A” or “5” in an AP class, that increases your GPA and if you are straight As High School student, your GPA will turn out to be greater than 4 on the scale of 4.
  • College admissions- An AP Class on your transcript informs the admissions panel at colleges that you are serious about college and hence made the extra effort of trying out college level classes in high school.
  • Advanced Placement itself- AP means that when you enter college, you will be given preference for intermediate/advanced classes of the subject whose AP exam you have already passed. The preference is needed because college classes have limited student intake and not everyone who wants to take a certain class, gets to take that class.
  • Saving money- High School (if public) is free while college (public and private) is expensive. So, if you knock off some of your college credits in High School, you save money paying for college.

So, how would you proceed about AP?

  • Try to take classes in summer after 9th/10th grade etc. so that you can knock off some other classes in place of which you will take an AP class in Spring or Fall Semester of High School.
  • Take the AP class in the regular school year.
  • At the end of the AP class, you take the standard AP exam through College Board, offered in your High School itself.
  • Once you pass the class, the grade appears on your High School transcript.
  • Here is the link to understand what colleges accept:

Hope this information was helpful!