ADVANCED PLACEMENT (“AP”) courses are another way for students to take college-level study while still in high school grades and earn college credit. The Angelicum Academy currently offers 11 Advanced Placement (“AP”) courses, beginning each September. These are listed under the Angelicum “Live Classes” tab for registration.

In 2006, over one million students took Advanced Placement examinations. Many high schools in the United States offer AP courses, though the College Board allows any student to take any examination regardless of participation in its respective course. Therefore, homeschooled students and students from schools that do not offer AP courses have an equal opportunity to take AP exams. Taking AP courses prepares students with familiarity with the tested material.

AP offers undergraduate university-level curricula and examinations to high school students. Colleges and universities in the US and elsewhere may grant placement and course credit to students who obtain qualifying scores on the examinations. Some colleges use AP test scores to exempt students from introductory coursework, others use them to place students in higher designated courses, and some do both. Typically, this appears as a “CR” grade on the college transcript, although some colleges and universities will award an A grade for a 5 score. An AP course offered by the Angelicum Academy may be cancelled at the sole discretion of the Academy, in which case a full refund will be promptly made. AP requires completing a final exam, which cost students $99 to take (not included in tuition – prices subject to change). Each college’s policy is different, but most require a minimum score of 3 or 4 to receive college credit. The Angelicum Academy’s CEEB (College Entrance Exam Code) is: 011229.

AP Exam information. AP tests are scored on a 1 to 5 scale as follows:

• 5– Extremely well qualified
• 4– Well qualified
• 3– Qualified
• 2– Possibly qualified
• 1– No recommendation

Check with your AP instructor to find out the exact date, time, and location of your AP Exam. AP Exams are administered over several weeks beginning the first full week in May typically at the school that offers the AP course. If you’re homeschooled or you attend a school that doesn’t administer AP Exams, you’ll need to arrange to take your exams at another school. Your first step is to search the AP Course Ledger ( https://apcourseaudit.inflexion.org/ledger/  ). The AP Course Ledger is the official, up-to-date, comprehensive list of schools that have passed the AP Course Audit. You can search by country, state/province, or city to find a school where you might be able to test. After finding schools near you that offer the courses you want to take exams for, do an internet search for the school’s phone number. Then call and ask to speak with the school’s AP coordinator to learn if the school is allowing homeschooled students to test there this year.  

Look for and contact schools as early in the school year as possible. Note that schools may have their own local deadlines and policies for receiving requests from outside students to test at their school, so you’ll want to give yourself as much time as possible to contact schools. Updates will be made to the AP Course Ledger every November, so if you still need to find possible schools, you can check the Ledger again in November to see if any schools in your area were added.  When you find an AP coordinator able to administer your AP Exam(s), they are responsible for ordering your exam materials, telling you when and where to report for the exams, and collecting the exam fees. 

Note: The deadline for schools to submit AP Exam orders is mid-November. If you’re unable to find a school by then, you can keep looking. At their discretion, a school could add you to their order after the November deadline, and they could request that the late order fee be waived in that circumstance. But because schools can set their own deadlines and policies related to ordering and fees, start looking for a school as early as possible. 

Completing AP courses helps students qualify for various types of scholarships; according to the College Board 31% of colleges and universities look at AP experience when making scholarship decisions.