{"id":16160,"date":"2020-05-06T16:49:30","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T21:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kaptest.com\/blog\/prep\/?p=16160"},"modified":"2020-09-11T20:39:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T20:39:53","slug":"pick-b-for-boris-the-importance-of-college-credit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/pre-college\/pick-b-for-boris-the-importance-of-college-credit\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting College Credit from AP Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in high school, I knew the following about AP tests:
\n1. They looked good on college apps.
\n2. They could give college credit.
\nIt\u2019s the latter I didn\u2019t fully appreciate at the time. Looking back, I wish somebody had grabbed me by the shoulders, shaken me and said, \u201cSerious, AP tests are really amazing and so worth it!\u201d
\nSo if you\u2019re not a senior yet, use my story to keep you from making the same mistakes I did.<\/p>\n

What good is college credit, anyway?<\/h3>\n

I started out in college as a computer science major. Two semesters in, I realized I\u2019d go insane if I did nothing but write code for four years, so I added an English major for fun. The thing was, my double-major was actually a dual-degree\u2014English was a B.A. while computer science was a B.S. This meant that I had to complete general credits for the school of humanities\u00a0and<\/i>\u00a0for the school of engineering. There was some overlap, but not much.
\nSpring of freshman year, I sat down to do the math and discovered that I\u2019d have to take 6 classes a semester (commonly students take 4 or 5) to graduate on time, and then I\u2019d graduate with exactly 2 classes to spare.
\nIt was at this precise moment that I realized\u2014much too late in the game\u2014how incredible AP tests are. I had 3 free credits, compliments of AP. I was on track to graduate with 2 classes to spare. You can do the math here: If not for AP, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to graduate in four years.<\/p>\n

The power of AP credit<\/h3>\n

One thing you should know is that \u201cAP class\u201d is not the same thing as \u201cAP test.\u201d You can take any AP test you want; you don\u2019t need to have taken the corresponding class.
\nCase in point: Calculus. I was really good at math in high school and never broke a sweat in AP calc. My school only offered Calc AB, not Calc BC, so I unthinkingly took the Calc AB test and breezed to a 5. The thing is, it wouldn\u2019t have been that hard for me to study for the \u201cC\u201d part of Calc BC on my own and take the BC test instead. I would then have gotten credit for Calc 1 and Calc 2. As it was, I only got credit for Calc 1, so my freshman year I had to take Calc 2.
\nThink about that for a moment: a few hours of effort in high school would have spared me from taking\u00a0an entire class<\/i>\u00a0in college. It\u2019s not that I disliked taking Calc 2 at the time\u2014it was easy, and I got an A. But if I hadn\u2019t needed to take it, I could have taken a class on Tolstoy or philosophy or French or anything else I found interesting.
\nPutting that credit to use!
\nHaving free AP credit when you arrive on campus translates to extra time in college. There are four main ways you can use that time:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Complete a major\/degree combo that might ordinarily be impossible (this is the path I chose, getting both a humanities and an engineering degree).<\/li>\n
  2. Graduate early and save tens of thousands of dollars.<\/li>\n
  3. Take fewer classes per quarter or semester, giving you more space to focus on your grades, a job, a sport, or any other extracurricular pursuit.<\/li>\n
  4. Take a bunch of fun electives and learn a lot of awesome stuff.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I know it\u2019s tempting to avoid AP tests because high school is busy enough; but if you can squeeze an extra AP test or two into your high school preparation, I highly recommend it. When you get to college, you\u2019ll never regret having fewer mandatory classes and more freedom to explore.
    \n

    \n
    <\/div>

    Boris loves teaching complex problems and helping students overcome their Test Day fears. He brings his sense of humor to the classroom–as well as his love of strategy board games.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

    <\/div><\/div>
    Boris Dvorkin<\/strong>Kaplan Instructor<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n<\/div>
    \n<\/span>
    \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Back in high school, I knew the following about AP tests: 1. They looked good on college apps. 2. They could give college credit. It\u2019s the latter I didn\u2019t fully appreciate at the time. Looking back, I wish somebody had grabbed me by the shoulders, shaken me and said, \u201cSerious, AP tests are really amazing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[129],"tags":[118,128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33788,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16160\/revisions\/33788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}