Advanced Placement credit should be more widely accepted by colleges

By Parnia Mazhar
Staff Writer

Throughout the nation, all colleges, especially those that seem to expect their applicants to receive above a 4.0 grade point average, should grant credits to students who take Advanced Placement courses and pass AP tests in high school.

Generally, when a university gives credit to students for AP classes they took in high school, the student does not have to repeat that specific course in college. According to a College Board survey in 2013, 68 percent of colleges require students to score at least a three on the AP exams in order to receive any credit.

Some schools, however, only grant credit for a score of four or five, or only count credits as electives, rather than credits for the required courses.

Yale, Harvard and a majority of Ivy League institutions are some of many colleges that do not offer any credit for students’ AP scores.

However, according to a College Board study, the average admitted student’s weighted GPA for both of these prestigious universities is above a 4.22, which shows that a majority of their attendees took multiple AP courses in high school.

Students who do not receive an obvious benefit from a college for taking AP classes should not be expected to take them in order to gain admission to that college.

Another benefit students get from gaining credit for  their APs is that their cost for tution will decrease because they can validate classes. The students that do not receive credit, even after passing the AP test, unfairly lose out on that opportunity.

Some of these schools that do not grant hours or credits for AP courses, such as Brown University, allow students to utilize their AP scores, but only to place out of lower level courses.

According to Stanford News, students also take AP classes to be more competitive in the college process. However, with some colleges, once the student is admitted, the AP credits no longer matter, unjustly taking away opportunities for students to benefit from the hard work they did in high school.

Colleges should offer some reward for students to take AP classes if they are a factor in admission. It is reasonable that colleges want students to take a specific curriculum taught by their faculty, but at the least, colleges should offer a decrease in tuition for those that pass the test.

In addition to the AP exams, the College Board writes and administers the SAT, another factor in college admissions. If colleges rely on this testing to judge students’ merit, they should also consider the validity of AP test scores and classes.

Restrictions on giving credit for AP courses negatively affects students, especially because 83 to 89  percent of students receive financial aid, according the National Center for Education Statistics. It is unfair for schools to deprive students of the opportunity to save money and graduate early, especially after they paid for and passed AP tests to prove they are proficient in the material.

Students should not have to take AP courses to get into top colleges if those schools do not award them some kind of credit. Students that pass the AP exam should at least be able to skip the introductory class.