Summary:
Today’s lesson discussed the importance of AP and IB classes and tests in college admissions. SATs and ACTs are still important, but they are becoming less important than AP and IB tests. This is because these tests reflect an entire year’s worth of learning rather than a standardized test that can be prepped for. Therefore, colleges are looking more to AP and IB tests as a way to assess a student’s education and knowledge.
Transcript:
0:00:03: In today’s lesson, I wanted to talk about the importance of AP classes and AP testing, or even IB classes and IB testing, depending on what your school offers. As we’ve talked about before, SATs are becoming less important, ACTs are becoming less important in college admissions. They’re still important, but they’re becoming a little bit less important.
0:00:22: So it turns out that AP tests and IB tests are becoming even more important in college admissions. And this is for a couple of reasons. One, they don’t have these other standardized tests that they’re looking at and weighting the same way that they used to. But two, these courses and these tests actually reflect an entire year worth of learning. And so it’s not just a standardized test that you can sort of prep for and get some techniques for. You actually have to learn the material in these tests. Now, another thing to keep in mind is the colleges really look at what you’ve done with the opportunities that were presented to you in school.
0:01:00: If you go to a school that offers just a handful of AP classes, you take one, two, three, that’s absolutely fine. You’ve taken a lot of the classes that are offered, and you’ve taken advantage of the opportunities that are there. On the other hand, if your school offers 20 AP classes and you’ve only taken two, you really haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities that were presented to you, and the colleges are going to look at that.
0:01:26: So if you do have a variety of AP classes or IB classes that are available to you, I recommend that you really explore them. Now, take the classes that you’re interested in, to be sure, the things that you think you can do well in, to be sure. You will get that nice GPA point boost for most schools. Usually it’s a one point boost, for example, for AP classes, and you also have the option of earning college credit.
0:01:49: Now, this can be a valuable tool to get college credit to save money, especially if you’re going to go to, say, a state school that does give you a lot of credits for AP classes and where you’re paying by the credit, In some cases, I don’t recommend actually taking advantage of the advanced Placement that you might get out of a lower level class, because even though these classes are really college level learning classes, like freshman year college level learning classes, there’s going to be more information in the college level class. For example, if you take AP Physics and you do really well, and you get a four or five on the AP test, and you place out of, say, your freshman engineering physics class, I might recommend you take it anyway, depending on your circumstances, because the college class is just going to give you more, and it’s going to be tailored to that specific engineering program.
0:02:40: So that’s my take on APS. I think they are valuable. There’s a lot of good information in AP classes, and it’s a good way to test your ability to learn a lot of information in a relatively short period of time and show colleges that you can do that. Right. Catch you guys next time.
0:02:57: Thank you for watching, and for more information you can go to our website for more videos on our blog or subscribe to our YouTube or Instagram feeds. And don’t forget, Aim Higher!
