AP (Advanced Placement) Exams and courses offer academically motivated students the opportunity to earn college credit in high school.
AP courses and AP Exams are associated with each other, but they can also be taken independently of one another. AP courses are designed to prepare students for AP Exams, but they are beneficial in themselves. And a student is able to take an AP Exam without having taken an AP course beforehand.
AP Exams
The College Board offers up to 40 AP Exams in the subject areas of English, history and government, science, math and computer science, arts, and world languages.
Each exam takes between two and three hours and can earn college credit with a qualifying score (at some colleges, a score of 3 is required, at others 4 or 5). While some colleges will give academic credits for AP Exams or allow students to bypass certain freshman courses, others will only give elective credit; it is up to each college to determine how the exams are handled.
We highly recommend that you and your student familiarize yourself with the policies at their prospective college for granting college credits taken in high school, including which AP classes are eligible for credit and the minimum score needed.
Scoring
AP Exams receive a score of 1 to 5.
Scheduling
All AP Exams are offered on various dates and in various locations, generally during the first two weeks of May, though the College Board sets the exact schedule for each year and may make adjustments as needed. Results are available online in early July. Students may take as many AP Exams as they want and can also retake them the following May.
Registration
You can register here. The College Board requires that testing centers order their exams by November 15, so you must contact a participating school well before this deadline. Not all exams are offered at all locations.
We suggest that you begin your search for a testing center by contacting public schools and large private schools in your region. Survey the AP courses being offered to determine which schools to contact. Private schools tend to be more open to homeschool students. Just as with the PSAT, some states’ laws require that public schools allow homeschooled students to take AP Exams, while others do not. If you are an HSLDA member and a school will not accommodate your student, please contact us as early as possible for assistance.
At registration, you can designate one college to receive your student’s score report for free. This official score report contains the scores from every AP Exam that the student has ever taken, unless you specifically request that any scores be withheld. There is a fee for each additional score report requested, so you may want to only send results to the one college the student plans to attend. Colleges only accept scores directly from the test provider. Once the exam information is sent to the college, credit is awarded by the Registrar’s office after the student is enrolled.
At registration, you’ll also be asked for a school code. Input the homeschool code: 970000.
Test preparation
While taking an official AP course (see below) can be very profitable, students are not required to take one to take an AP Exam. A student may take the exam independent of an AP course. You will find AP Exam information and practice questions by subject here.
AP courses
AP courses offer college-bound teens opportunities to develop skills like independent learning, studying, and time management. Their college-level rigor, breadth of material covered, and GPA weighting on student transcripts make them desirable for ambitious teens who plan to apply to selective colleges.
AP courses are challenging and frequently cited guidelines estimate 10–15 hours per week are needed for study and preparation. The actual time needed can vary significantly based on the student’s aptitude and the subject’s complexity.
AP courses are designed to emulate college courses with rigorous materials, even preparing students to test out of college courses, so we typically recommend that most teens wait until 11th or 12th grade before taking them. As a parent, you can discern the maturity level and study habits of your 10th grader when deciding if you will encourage them to take AP courses. Due to the pace and rigor of AP classes, we do not recommend that 9th graders attempt them.
AP and Advanced Placement are official trademarks of the College Board. A course labeled AP or Advanced Placement indicates that its content and syllabus have been approved by the College Board as meeting AP standards. Be aware that when a curriculum provider uses the phrase AP equivalent, the course cannot be designated AP on your student’s transcript. When listing courses on the high school transcript, include AP in the titles of College Board-approved courses only.
In a weighted high school GPA, official AP courses are typically weighted more heavily than other courses. (Their point scale is A=5, B=4, C=3, and D=2 in weighted GPA calculations.)