Your kid is stressing out about AP courses.
She has loaded her schedule and you’re trying to figure out if all the work is really worth it in the end. As your family deals with an overworked teenager, you’ve probably asked yourself, “how much can my family save in college tuition through AP credit?”
The answer is a lot. Or maybe not much. Or some. Or nothing. How much you save depends on two factors: scores and schools.
Advanced Placement basics
This article is directed at those already familiar with what Advanced Placement (AP) and is and how it works. Here’s a quick primer if you are not:
- The Advanced Placement (AP) program is an initiative of the College Board designed to challenge high school students with college-level material.
- Your student’s high school determines which AP courses it offers and individual student eligibility for each class. Online classes might be available if your child’s school does not offer that class. Talk to your school’s counselor.
- Each exam has a $94 exam fee. Demonstrated financial aid can reduce the fee. Check with your child’s counselor.
- Exams are scored from 1 to 5. A minimum score to receive any college credit any is 3.
Institution’s policies regarding AP credit vary greatly
Each school handles AP credit a little differently. Some award credit for a 3 or above for any test. Some schools require a minimum score of 4, some require a 5. Others are even more restrictive. Generally, private institutions are not as generous with course credit as public ones but you have to investigate on a case-by-case basis.
The following offer no AP credit, period:
- Dartmouth University
- Brown University
- California Institute of Technology
- Amherst College
Other elites such as Harvard, MIT and Haverford only accepts scores of 5. Johns Hopkins University only awards credit in a handful of STEM-related courses, no humanities. In addition, students majoring in economics, biology and chemistry face further restrictions regarding how they can use credits in those fields.
These are obviously some of the most competitive and highly-regarded schools in the country but you should not be too concerned about those restrictive policies being the norm.
Franklin & Marshall College, a very selective private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, provides a counter example. While the school does require a score of 4 or above, it offers credit for more than 30 subjects. Those subjects include some that many schools do not always accept such as Capstone Research, Capstone Seminar and Human Geography.
According to the college’s website:
“There is no limit on the number of Advanced Placement course credits a student may receive, but these credits cannot count toward the 16 course credits that must be earned at Franklin & Marshall nor toward the 21 course credits that must be earned with standard grades.”
What does that mean regard to cost? Franklin & Marshall requires 32 course credits for a Bachelor of Arts degree. At least 21 of the credits require grades. That leaves a maximum number of AP credits accepted at 11. Assuming that your student has at least eight AP scores of 4 or 5, she could easily graduate in three years by taking four courses per semester for six semesters to add to her AP credit.
The “retail” Cost of Attendance (COA) for Franklin & Marshall is around $70,000 per year. However, this particular school does a very good job of meeting financial need (average award of $47,895 according to collegedata.com) and awards merit scholarships, as well (average non-need based scholarship of $6,820 according to USNEWS.com premium).
Without diving into your personal financial details, let’s just assume a net price of $30,000/year to go to this school. Going back to the idea of your child having earned two semesters of credit, your cost for an undergraduate degree from a well-regarded college has dropped from a four-year cost without AP credit of $120,000 to a three-year cost of $90,000. That’s a pretty good ROI on $752 invested in exam fees.
What about public universities?
Again, each school handles AP credit in its own manner but
Some states actually mandate that its public universities accept AP credits. Some go as far to mandate the acceptance of scores of 3 or better (denoted with *). Here’s a quick list of those states:
- Florida*
- Iowa
- Kentucky*
- Minnesota
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oregon
- South Carolina*
- South Dakota
- Texas*
- Utah
- West Virginia
A good resource for overall AP policies in your state is the Education Commission of the States. They have one comprehensive page with lots of information about each state’s policies at both the secondary and higher education level.
The universities that make up the California State University system are great examples of schools that offer great value (if you are a resident of that state) with regard to AP credit. Those schools only require scores of 3 or above and offer additional credit for scores of 4 or 5.
Let’s take the example of the student from above who presented eight AP scores of 4 or above to Franklin & Marshall. That equated to two semesters of credit. At California State University-Sacramento, those same scores might result in 48 hours of credits. The school requires 120 hours to graduate, so that would leave only 72 hours to be completed for a degree. At fifteen hours a semester, that student would only need five semesters to graduate.
The in-state “retail” COA for Sacramento State is $26,000. For in-state students, the average need-based grant is around $9,000. Using that grant, let’s round off the yearly cost to $15,000 year or $7,500 per semester. At that number, the cost of a degree would only be $37,500, a savings of $22,500.
Limits to AP credit
You’ll have to research each institution your child is interested in to find specific information about that school’s AP credit policy. Some limits I’ve found:
- Credit is only offered for a limited number of courses
- Credit is not offered for specific course requirements, only electives
- Credit is not offered for courses that are part of the student’s major
- Limit to number of total AP credits awarded
- Restrictions on total credits toward graduation earned outside that school’s campus
Where can I find AP credit information for each college?
There are two quick methods to find AP credit policies. Obviously, the most reliable is review each college’s specific web page about the topic. Just insert a college’s name into this google search, “X AP credit“, and the first result should be that school’s policy.
If that doesn’t work, another resource is the College Board site’s AP Credit Policy Search. While comprehensive in the colleges it covers, the results don’t necessarily provide the level of detail you need.
Don’t be afraid to contact admissions counselors. Their job is to recruit students for their institution. Many schools will list their admissions staff and what territories they cover so you can find out exactly who is best for you to try to reach (Example: Occidental College).
An additional resource is the Albert.io AP Saving Calculator. You can enter AP scores and school names and the site will estimate your savings in tuition cost. I’ve found it to be somewhat helpful but it’s smarter to use a specific school’s net price calculator to get a real estimate on your individual cost, then figure out how many semesters of tuition your child can knock out with AP scores.
It still comes down to your student
No matter what research you do, the results still come down to your child performing well on the actual exams. The way I’ve explained to my oldest child as we approach decision time with college, the more AP credit she can rack up, the better chance she has of going to schools at the edge of what we can afford. She’s going to college. If she’s determined to leave our state’s options behind, her academic performance — including AP exams — is largely going to determine where.
College Dad 