I attended Hofstra University from 2003 to 2007. I started with 15 credits, 12 of which came from Advanced Placement (AP) exams in high school. Although Hofstra's website doesn't have a table for this, I looked online at how many credits other colleges would have given me for the same scores on the same AP exams and here is what I found (how many credits I would have gotten): Hofstra*: 12 Binghamton: 12 Stony Brook: 12 Adelphi: 9 (Adelphi is located near Hofstra) Syracuse: 9 Centenary: 6 Belmont: 6 Gonzaga: 3 Penn State: 10 Northern Colorado: 9 Wisconsin-Milwaukee: 12 Stetson: 7 Georgia State*: 9 Virginia Commonwealth*: 15 North Carolina-Wilmington*: 15 Old Dominion*: 6 James Madison*: 7 Citadel: 15 George Mason*: 6 Towson*: 9 Delaware*: 6 Northeastern*: 12 William & Mary*: 3 I looked at every school in the Colonial Athletic Association (denoted with a * above) which is where Hofstra plays sports and found information for eleven of the schools (I couldn't find information for Drexel). I also look at twelve other schools. The mean for the 22 schools other than Hofstra was exactly 9 credits, so I got 3 more credits than the mean of the other schools. Did other people know how big a difference there would be? Is it surprising? Is it fair?
It varies widely. I don't remember the exact credit numbers, but when I applied, in 2000, I would have gone into the University of Houston as a second-semester sophomore. Instead I went to Caltech, which as a matter of policy gives no AP credit at all. (In fact, anyone who hadn't taken the AP calculus exam or its equivalent had to take or test out of a remedial calculus class in the summer.) Not surprising at all.
My general impression is, the higher the university's academic prestige, the less credit that AP classes receive. Which of course makes perfect sense ... if North-Carolina Wilmington gives 15 credits for the same material that Chicago and Cal Tech gives 0 credits, that's one obvious way for the latter schools to demonstrate that they have higher and more rigorous standards for its graduates than does the former. Back in the day, it was different. Every university took 'em. Several of my Ivy roommates graduated in 3 years due to AP credits.
I teach an AP history course, and my rule of thumb is that a "3" will get them credit at most state colleges. If they want to go to a good private school, they better get a "4" and hope the school takes it.
Prestige is part of it, sure. But it's also mixed with the public vs private thing. Public schools are more directly answerable to parents who see AP credit as a means of reducing college costs. Keep in mind also that in many cases the final say for what an AP score generates is the academic department under whose name the credit will be given. Furthermore, it's not always the case that the AP credit awarded is going to treated the same way by different units of the same school. For example if Janey gets a 4 or 5 on the AB calc test and is awarded the equivalent of Calc 1 via AP credit, Janey may find that the Business school she hopes to get into as a sophomore transfer is perfectly happy to accept the AP credit in lieu of a course taken on a college campus, but the Econ department (which also requires calc 1 as a prereq to their major, which Janey is also considering) does not. It's also not necessarily the case that med schools, for example, may not accept AP credit lieu of college coursework as fulfillment of some of their prerequisites.
A lot of that is going to come down to what kind of experiences they've had with students who had AP credit. One college where I used to teach had a lot of problems with kids getting AP credits for English (for example) who couldn't write a college-level paper to save their lives. Of course, since the students had AP credit, the students tended to disagree rather strenuously about their writing abilities. And I think it's to avoid those awkward and irritating situations that some places (and/or departments) don't accept AP credits quite as readily as others.
Exactly. Similarly, at my school, I've yet to see a department that doesn't keep pretty good numbers on the students' taking their concentration/major courses. If a department notices that the students taking their heavily quantitative core course based on AP credit for calculus get reamed a new one compared to the students who took calculus on a college campus, then the tendency is to stop accepting AP credit as the pre-req. Which is not to say anything (generically) bad about AP courses or the people teaching them, mind you. The AP classes in the schools around me have great reputations and for good reason. There just seems to be a systemic mis-match, especially in certain subject areas.
FWIW, I have had students who were horrible in the class but did fantastic on the test. Many of them had no business in a college class.
Illinois just released last year's stats about AP tests ... the state was well above the national average for test scores, but wow. It's shocking how many kids couldn't manage a 3 on the tests. What were they thinking all year during the class? On the flip side of lax standards, there was my kid's AP Calc BC class last semester. He was given a Calc AB test for his Calc BC final. His score would have given him a 5 on the AP test ... and it got him a B- on the final.