Accepting A Student's Limintations With Standardized Testing

            In Florida, where I counsel, we have a state funded scholarship called Bright Futures. In order to qualify, students must meet certain criteria. The most challenging of those is a standardized test score. As I write this, the minimum SAT score one needs to qualify for Bright Futures is a 1210 which is a pretty good score.

I was recently working with a student who had taken the SAT two times, both scores were around the mid 1000 mark or 1050ish. In her case, she actually went down a little between her first and second test. That’s a little unusual as I more commonly see students improve a bit, but it happens. The problem this student faced is that her mother was insistent she was capable of obtaining a score that would make her eligible for Bright Futures. This is a good student and I have plenty of respect for her intellect, but based on where she started with the SAT, I’m not so sure she can get the score she needs.

The fact is not every student is great at testing. The subject of whether standardized testing is fair or just or accurately indicative of a student’s capabilities is perhaps a topic for another day. My point here is that I believe test takers generally are who they are.

The College Board's own data from their SAT suggests that students typically improve their score 60-70 points from where they start. Anecdotally and very unscientifically, I tell my students a 100 point improvement is a reasonable expectation. The parent above and many others I’ve spoken to have expectations that fall well outside a statistical range of high probability.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that statistical anomalies don’t happen. I don’t enjoy being pessimistic about my students’ capabilities, and I have high regard for the impact test preparation can have on results. However, I also approach most things in my life with an emphasis on consideration of what is most likely to happen rather than what is possible to happen. In other words, I consider myself a realist.

There are so many financial and emotional implications in the college planning process and testing is tied so much to the same.  I believe we do ourselves a disservice when we aren’t honest with ourselves about who our students are as test takers. I hope that the parent above has a backup plan for their very academically talented and capable student if she can’t obtain the Bright Futures score. She’s worked too hard not to go to college and there are other ways to fund her post-secondary goals. 

Again, I think test prep is important. It might be the difference in a student making a 60 point improvement and a 120 point improvement and that can be a significant difference. However, to insist and make the assumption with your child that they will improve by astronomical amounts fails to allow for a realistic conversation about what the most likely opportunities for them will be. This can make a whole family unprepared for the transition to college and that’s not good for anybody.

What are Parent PLUS loans?

     After families of graduating seniors complete their FAFSA, hopefully soon after October 1 when the FAFSA opens, a financial aid package from the colleges the student has been accepted to should follow. In theory, these packages should cover the student’s cost of attendance at the school the student chooses to attend. In theory. So, what happens when it doesn’t? How can a family put together the money they will actually need to send their senior to college?

For most, the answer to this question will be a Parent PLUS loan. Parents can apply for this through the federal government after the student receives their financial aid package and if they calculate a shortage of needed funds there. As you might expect, there are some key differences between the Parent PLUS loan and the Stafford loan which is the more common type of loan that will likely already be a part of the financial aid package. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Stafford loan is tied to the student, the Parent PLUS loan is tied to the parent. So, at the end of the day, those are different people on the hook for repayment.

Students don’t have to pass a credit check to be eligible for a Stafford Loan but Parent PLUS applicants do. If the parent fails that check, the student can talk to their financial aid office about increasing the amount of their loan. That request is usually granted. It is important to note too that Parent PLUS loans come with a fixed interest rate and a few options for repayment terms ranging from 10 years to 25 years as well as an income-based option. The repayment starts immediately though, whereas students don’t have to begin repayment of their Stafford loan until six months following their graduation. Stafford loans may or may not be subsidized as well. If they are, the loan won’t accrue interest while the student is in school which can significantly reduce the overall cost of the loan. A Parent PLUS loan is never subsidized. Lastly, Parent PLUS loans carry a 4% origination fee. That’s something Stafford loans don’t have.

In short, the Stafford loan is a better deal than the Parent PLUS loan. The terms are always going to be better and cheaper. Also, Parent PLUS loans are where the amount of loan debt can spiral out of control. Remember, what’s in the financial aid package ought to cover the cost of attendance. If it doesn’t, a family would do well to examine their budget and see if there are changes or cuts that can be made. As a college recruiter once told me, sending your child to college shouldn’t come without some expectation of sacrifice or change to lifestyle. If you can’t find a way to do that, you may well need to borrow money to better your child’s future. As those repayments come due, what will that mean to your future lifestyle? Parent PLUS loans can be the bridge between a financial aid package and a college education for your child. That’s a good thing, but be careful with them. 

The Common App

 Over the past several years or so, the college admissions process has seen a revolution. Paper applications have essentially been extinct for some time, and it now appears that unique applications or applications that only serve one institution are headed in the same direction. At the forefront of this revolution is the Common App which now serves over 900 institutions. According to Forbes Magazine, Common App applications increased 11% between the 19-20 and 20-21 school year. This number is expected to grow which is likely to increase the number of participating schools which should increase applications in turn. The cycle is likely to continue. 

The prevalence and growth of Common App is a good thing for high school seniors. Its beauty lies in its efficiency. As the name implies, it is a generic college admissions application that is accepted at many colleges. So, students can complete one application and simply check off which subscribing institutions they want their application sent to. 

This is one of the initial steps of the College App, students should have an idea of which colleges they intend to apply to before they get to. They will have to pay an application fee to each college they send the Common App to, so this step should be approached with some discrimination. 

Next, you’ll get into the meat of the application. Here, you’ll include some academic information but also your activities and awards. You should think of activities as anything you’ve participated in like clubs and sports, including ones outside of school. You can think of awards as anything you might have won as a result of those activities. This is your chance to demonstrate a lot about your personality and the kinds of things you’re into which is very important to the colleges. Spend some time prior to completing the application dwelling on this. You don’t want to leave things out that might not come to mind in the moment you’re working on your application.

Following that, students will need to write their essay. The Common App provides six prompts from which to choose. This is where students can express their voice to the colleges and tell their story. Numbers and grades are just data. This is where students become humans and my advice here is to be honest. Don’t try to say something you think the colleges want to hear or come up with some off-the-wall gimmicky essay you hope will make you stand out. Admission reps have to read thousands of these essays and they’ll sniff these things out in a heartbeat. Instead, use the essay to express who you are with substance and conviction, perhaps by sharing what important things led to the development of You.

Finally, there are recommendation letters. Not every school will require these and if you can’t figure out how to add them to your application, the colleges you’re applying to don’t want them. Ultimately, when rec letters can be submitted, you’ll just add an email address of the people you’ve chosen as a recommender and they’ll get an email directing them to log-in to the Common App themselves and add their recommendation.

Once you get all that done, you should be close to hitting submit. There could be some other caveats and requirements from individual colleges so be sure to monitor your Common App and emails from colleges closely.

College Homesickness

 

                    So maybe this is more properly a post for a college student than a high school one, but it’s not too soon to be thinking about these things for students in high school. By now, colleges are in full swing and freshmen there are settled into their dorm rooms or apartments. However, many of those students are unsettled emotionally.

            Despite the excitement of moving out of the nest and the anticipation of freedom a young person often has during their senior year of high school, the first couple of months of college can be a pretty challenging time. Most college-bound high school students are incredibly busy people--up early for study sessions, school, practice and extracurriculars, work, homework and social time with family (a little) and friends (lots) before it’s time for bed again. That makes for a pretty full schedule.

            Fast forward to college. You’ve got class for just two or three hours a day, a little bit of homework here and there, but the extracurriculars are probably gone, there’s often not a job early on in college, and the number of friends you now have has decreased dramatically. One of those friends, a dorm roommate, is almost a stranger and you’re stuck with them in this tiny dorm room. Learning to do so much on your own that mom and dad used to help with (like so much of your meal planning) complicates matters. This abrupt change in lifestyle is the perfect recipe for a good case of homesickness.

            The cure is assurance and patience. As that first semester (or sometimes second) stretches on, the student adjusts to their new lifestyle. Their new friendships grow some roots, they get to know their new community better, and they find ways to fill the extra time they have on their hands. These things don’t happen overnight though, and so it is a parent’s job to help their child through this period. Be accepting of their visits home on weekends, but encourage them to stick it out and stay at school some weekends too. Encourage them to reach outside of their comfort zone and go to events and functions happening around campus. Remind them that many other students are experiencing the same emotions they are. Ultimately, be aware that homesickness is extraordinarily common in college freshmen. Prepare for it by talking about it before the student moves away to college and instilling a mindset that things aren’t going to be picture perfect in early going, but they will get better if the student has a positive attitude and is willing to work at acquiescing to the college lifestyle that can encompass some of the best years of a young person’s life if they give it a chance. 

            Going off to college is often the biggest change that has happened to a person in their life to that point. Change often comes with a learning curve, so it only makes sense to be open and honest about what to expect with this change. Talk to your child seriously about homesickness and make sure you both know it will get better in time. 

What is Class Rank

 There are many numbers or metrics that colleges use as they evaluate students for admissions. Among those is class rank. Most people are familiar with this and have an idea of what it means, but let's dig a little deeper into how it is calculated and how colleges use it.

Class rank is simply where a student’s GPA ranks compared to the other students in their graduation class. The student with the highest GPA is ranked first, second highest is second and so on. However, as I’ve written about before, students really have more than one GPA. They might have an unweighted and weighted GPA (and others depending on who is looking at it) so they really have more than one rank. Weighted and unweighted rank are the most common. Some schools report a student’s exact rank while others only report rank in deciles. Students can also be tied with the same rank.

From the collegiate standpoint, the purpose of rank is to give a college some perspective on how a student performs within their school and among their peers. High schools are different from one another. Some are very large, some are very small, some schools offer a very rigorous curriculum, some schools are weaker. So, rank gives some insight into a student’s performance in a way that GPA alone cannot. Let’s say a student has a 3.85 GPA. That sounds like a great GPA, but what if there are only 22 kids in the graduating class and I learn that ten of them actually have a GPA higher than that. Maybe this student is just average. On the other hand, what if I find that this 3.85 student is ranked tenth in a class 750. Now I think this is an elite student in a challenging school. Rank gives me the backdrop to compare the student against.

It’s important to make sure that you accurately report your rank. Colleges usually ask for weighted or unweighted rank or let you choose which one to report. If you have a choice, my advice is to always report the one that sounds most impressive. At my school, we typically end up with 8-10 students by senior year who have a perfect 4.0 unweighted GPA. They usually have varying weighted GPAs, but from the unweighted standpoint, they are all tied for first. So, they can all list their rank as first, though if they listed their weighted, one of those people might be tenth.

I encourage my students not to lose sleep about that or anything related to rank though. It does matter, but it’s not the end-all. A college or university is going to see your grades and course history. They’re going to know that you might have taken some pretty hard classes and done well in them, if you indeed have. Most colleges also request a profile from the high school which provides additional perspective, and the colleges that are in the same state or region with a given high school are usually already versed in what students from that high school are capable of at a certain level.

529 Plan Withdrawals

     A 529 plan can be a great way to save for college. These work a little like Roth IRAs in that they are investment vehicles in which you won’t have to pay taxes on your investment’s growth. So, when it comes time to pay for college you can pull all that money out without having to worry about the tax implications.

Well, that’s actually only true to a point. Perhaps the biggest downside to 529 plans is that their monies can only be spent on what the federal government deems as “qualified expenses.” To paint a broad stroke, qualified expenses include tuition, room, board, books, as well as some necessary supplies including technological ones like computers, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

    You can’t just pull however much money you want from your 529 and say “We have a really nice off campus apartment, and the rent is really expensive. All this money is for that.” Every college publishes a detailed cost of attendance. I like to describe this as an all-inclusive price to attend a college and stay alive for a given year as it includes tuition, room and board, supplies, transportation, clothing, personal expenses, and computer and phone. Again, note that not all of these are considered “qualified expenses” for the purposes of 529 plans. For those that are, the amount the individual colleges assign to each category is significant because that is the maximum you are allowed to withdraw from a 529 plan to spend on that category. 

    For example, the University of Florida lists $5,800 as the average annual cost of housing for the upcoming school year. So, even if you’re paying $6,800 a year for your apartment at UF, you won’t be able to withdraw more than $5,800 from your 529 plan to pay for it. Again these numbers are specific to each university. So, at Emory University which is located in a nice area of Atlanta and where you would expect housing costs to be higher, the housing allowance is $9,254.

    Maybe it’s worth mentioning too that as with many other things on your tax return, the IRS doesn’t have an efficient system to verify what you’ve actually spent your 529 withdrawals on. It’s the honor system really. However, were you to be audited, the IRS would certainly want to see concrete documentation of what you spent your 529 withdrawals on and they might reach as far back as 6 years.

    To be sure, you can actually withdraw any amount of money from a 529 plan to spend on anything you want. It’s just that anything that doesn’t fall under the category of a qualified expense counts as income and is subject to a 10% penalty. This is true for the earnings portion of your investment and not the contribution portion. Some states like California, impose additional fees on unqualified withdrawals. So, do your research. Paying these taxes and penalties definitely diminishes the advantages of a 529 plan, therefore it’s best to plan ahead and avoid these when possible. 

High School Science Selection

 When it is time to select a new class for the upcoming school year, selecting a science can be a little tricky. What happens in different science classes is about as diverse and varied as any content area under the same umbrella. After all, in a regular freshman English class you’re reading text, discussing it, and writing a bit. The same is really true for an advanced-level senior English class, right?

However, the things a student is doing in an earth and space science class is completely different from what goes on in an anatomy class. Still, both classes are considered a science and in some places they might even be taught by the same person. There’s just a lot of variety within the curriculum of any school’s science department.

So, with such diversity how do you know which science course to take? To begin, it's obvious that students will need to take any specific science classes that are required of them. For example, in Florida where I counsel, students are required to have three science credits one of which must be biology. So, everyone takes biology, that’s a given, but those other two science credits are up in the air. Determining which ones to take can be easier for some students than for others. A student who is dead set on a career in medicine would do well to focus on courses like biology, chemistry, or anatomy. A future mechanical engineering student will likely benefit from physics.

What about the student who isn’t really going to touch science in the future though? How do they decide what science classes to take? My advice here is to just spend some time thinking about the curriculum offered and make a rational decision about which course has the most potential to be meaningful to you in the future, even if that means reaching for some connections,

For example, perhaps you have a budding writer on your hands. There’s generally not a ton of science involved in that. However, maybe a course like forensic science would be a good choice because there’s a lot of fodder there for storytelling. What about an artist? At some point they might want to draw a human figure, right? So maybe anatomy is a good choice. In fact, courses like anatomy or biology are always a good choice because a student is certainly always going to have a body and any knowledge that might come into play when they are sitting in a doctor’s office one day either to discuss themselves or a family member can be beneficial.

Making a decision about which science course to take can be a little challenging for a student without strong science inclinations. However, science is all around us in our everyday lives so making meaningful connections can be done by anyone. Sometimes, it just takes a little thinking.

How the Pandemic impacted college admissions

 

When the pandemic struck, it had a radical impact on college admissions. This bled into many areas. Potential students couldn’t tour schools. Many weren’t compelled to pay tuition at a school in another town when they were just going to be remoting in their classes anyways. Some students have been challenged to even finish high school while faced with quarantines and different educational formats than they are used to. However, one of the main effects COVID 19 has had on college admissions is seen in the old college admissions staple of standardized testing.

 

When the pandemic started in the spring of 2020, the SAT and ACT canceled all of their upcoming tests. Testing resumed in the fall but many students were not comfortable entering public settings to take a test and many test centers remained closed. Perhaps the testing services would have considered virtual options, but those can be tricky and the cheating scandal that happened the previous year did nothing to promote those. 

 

So, with many students cut off from the ability to take tests, how were so many colleges supposed to require them? The logical approach for many (but not all) colleges was to go test optional. 

 

Prior to the pandemic, this practice had been trending in college admissions. So, it wasn’t unheard of it. Still, there were many schools that previously relied on testing. The tests’ function is to provide a comparative basis for students who come from a variety of high school settings and backgrounds. The SAT and ACT are the national standard for high school students. 

 

Without this information, schools that do not require test scores have seen an uptick in applications. Students who may have felt their scores were a liability for admission are now emboldened to apply. This has proven to be a challenge for colleges. Those who made the switch were used to having test scores as an evaluation tool. They are now forced to evaluate an even larger application pool with less data.

 

I think that colleges are still trying to figure out the best approach to this. This isn’t the first time they’ve evaluated students and their experience is worth a lot, but I would imagine we’ll see college retention rates take small dips as some students struggle to keep up at colleges they might not have previously gotten into. From the student perspective, just because you might be able to get into a certain school, doesn’t necessarily mean you should go there. Success in college is all about finding the right fit. A student and their college are partners in education and if you don’t fit with that partner, the experience will lag. Going to a college that simply exceeds your aptitude could have disastrous life-long consequences, so be honest with yourself in this regard. 

 

I suspect that colleges are using this time to reevaluate their admissions process and the criteria they use for their decisions. Time will tell how their process evolves. In the meantime, students have the opportunity to consider some schools that have been out of reach for them before, but they would do well to keep in mind how the traditional demographics of that school align with their own skill set.

Late Decisions about College

              It’s May and you are likely reading this after May 1st. That is a significant date in the college admissions game as it is known as National Decision Day. This is the date most colleges would like for admitted students to notify them by as to whether or not they plan to enroll. Of course, you have to be admitted first in order to be in position to make that decision. However, what if you didn’t get it together a while back and never ended up applying in the first place? With graduation looming, what are your options if you still want to do something to continue your education?

This late in the game, you’ll have a hard time finding a seat in the summer or fall to a college or university that has competitive admissions. I shouldn’t speak in absolutes though. Some less competitive colleges might have a spot for you. Perhaps the best thing to do is to stop reading this right now and get on the phone. It never hurts to ask if it’s worth applying this late.

When it comes to a competitive schools, your best bet might be to seek admission for the spring semester. School doesn’t have to start in August or September. Many students start back to school in January and this is actually a fairly common occurrence. So, complete the application and just select your desired start date as the following January (Spring semester). Just don’t wait until December. That will be too late again. Do it now.

Another alternative would be to consider starting at a community college. Admission to these schools is usually not competitive, so you’ll likely be able to enroll up until pretty close to when class actually starts. If you start at a community college, most universities would prefer you earn an AA degree there before you seek a transfer. There’s a lot of upside to that though.

Perhaps you didn’t apply earlier because you weren’t sure if college was really right for you. Now, you see a lot of friends heading off to college and you’re only interested in it now, because it just seems like what high school graduates are supposed to do and you don’t want to be left behind. Be honest with yourself about this. College is expensive and if you’re not emotionally ready for it, you might not do well. That would be a waste of money and you could damage your chances of being successful when you are ready. It’s okay to take a little time to see what life after high school is like and if you’re ready to go a year from now, you can. Just make sure you live up to your potential. If you’re worth more than your high school job, don’t let yourself get stuck in it for too long. At some point, invest in learning a skill or the resources you need to make a career for yourself that maximizes what you’re capable of and provides a stable life for yourself.

Deferral vs. Waitlist

               It is spring time and to high school seniors, it is decision time. Of course, their decision on what school to attend next year, henges entirely on the decisions colleges have already made about the senior. Unfortunately, the decision the colleges make isn’t always very clear, so let’s clear up the meaning of a couple of the ambiguous decisions colleges release.

           Waitlisted and deferred are among the more confusing decisions released. Here is what they mean. If a student is deferred it means the college wants to think a little more about the student. Often, they’ll request an additional piece of information from the student like first semester grades or an additional test score. Such a request might be sent to a student who has good numbers in one area, but numbers that miss the college’s mark in another. So, for example, a student who has great grades but a low test score might be given the opportunity by the college to submit another test score.

Sometimes, a deferral can mean a student has been pushed into a different applicant pool. This is somewhat common for students who apply early decision wherein they receive an early admission decision but are obligated to attend if admitted. A deferral here is a college’s way of saying, “We’re not ready to pull the trigger on you this early, but we would like to take a hard look at you along with our regular pool of applicants.”

Students who are waitlisted are essentially caught in a school’s own internal numbers game. Colleges have something akin to quotas in each freshman class. Let’s say a college knows they want their freshman class to be about 5,000 students. They need a certain number of students paying tuition in order to make their budget work. This college might know too they’ll likely have about 12,000 students apply and maybe they’ll end up offering regular admission to about 7000 of those. However, it’s harder to predict how many of those 7000 students will actually choose to attend. For certain, some will decide to attend other schools. In order to make sure they hit that 5000 student mark, the college might choose to waitlist a group of applicants in order to sort of keep them on the line if they need to boost their freshman class or fill in some other gaps in their freshman profile. Of the 7000 admitted students, if 5500 choose to attend, that’s bad news for the waitlisted group. However, if only 4000 of those students commit, the college is going to go back to the waitlist and start offering admission.

           In either case, a waitlist or deferral is better than being out-right denied. A student may be stuck in college admissions purgatory, but they do still have a chance of getting in. This student would be wise to start seriously considering other options though. Waitlists and deferrals are very far from guarantees of admission and failing to put some effort into a plan B could leave the student without admission to any school as colleges often release final decisions on waitlists and deferrals very late in their admissions cycle.

Accepting the Imperfections of Teens

 I work with teenagers for a living. I’m in the adolescence business. These people are a different sort. To excel at my craft, I have to understand that. It is essential to my success that I appreciate and accept the different thought processes they have and consider those as I work with teenagers. In turn, I spend a considerable amount of time helping their parents do the same as well as my colleagues on occasion.

Teenagers are imperfect. The sooner you understand this and accept their inherent shortcomings the easier your experiences with them will be. It has been said that most of the problems people have with other people stem from differences in expectations. If a parent constantly expects a teen to think, behave, and operate like an effective adult, that parent is sure to be disappointed. You wouldn’t expect a toddler to act like an adult and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that teens are still children. The difference is that they look a lot more like adults, they are capable of adult conversations, and indeed are capable of making adult decisions regarding their actions. However, expecting them to do this on all occasions is a fallacy.

This doesn’t mean that teens should get a free pass. Their teen years can function as a training ground for adulthood. I believe that is how nature designed us. However, as is with training grounds, mistakes will be made and lessons will be learned. The most frustrated parents I work with do not tolerate this. They don’t understand what compelled their child to make such a poor decision. They expect them to be forthright, calculated, and scrupulous. When the teen falters, and they will, these same parents attack instead of scaffolding a learning opportunity. This only works to sour the relationship between parent and child and things can spiral downward from there.

The most effective parents are still disappointed when their children fall down. They know this is an inevitability though and are there to pick their children back up. They don’t condone their childrens’ poor decisions, but are not surprised by them. They impose consequences, calmly talk to their children about how to make better decisions in the future, and move on. The relationship strengthens and the child has a want to improve rather than a feeling of hopelessness in meeting an impossible standard. In other words, the child is able to train as they should on the training ground before they head off to battle on their own.

I truly believe that going into your relationship with teens with an expectation that they aren’t going to do everything right is the secret to successful relationships with them. Understand that they are learning to be better but they aren’t perfect yet. Be willing to help them in their journey towards adulthood and don’t be surprised at the moments they show you they are still kids. Doing so offers the support they need to be capable adults and makes for better outcomes in the future and the relationships you have with them.

The Pandemic's impact on College Admissions

  The global Corona Virus pandemic has had a tremendous impact on many things. College admission tests is among those. Let’s take a moment to review some of those changes and the impact they might have.

I think the highest impact change we’ve seen so far is a move away from the importance of standardized testing. Many colleges and universities have dropped their testing requirement or made it optional since the pandemic began. The testing services canceled test dates in the spring and summer of 2020, and while tests were offered in the fall many students, had reservations about going out to the public. As yet, no at-home testing is available from the SAT or ACT. With that in mind, I think many colleges felt like they didn’t have a choice but to move away from testing. It’s difficult to require test scores if students have limited opportunities to acquire them. Schools that don’t require tests have been around for a long time. I suspect many of those will continue their stance. However, I’m not convinced that others won’t revert back to requiring tests in the future. Their primary function is to serve as a way to compare different students from different backgrounds. A home-schooled student in California, a private school student in Florida, a public school student in Texas, and an international student from Tokyo might all have perfect grades but their educational experiences are very different. Tests serve as a way to put them on the same scale. Without those, colleges are left with a lot of guesswork.

The College Board has announced it will discontinue its Subject Tests and the optional essay on the SAT. Few colleges required the essay as I think they felt like the results were not as meaningful as other information culled from the test. It was also considerably more labor-intensive to grade. The rest of the test is multiple choice and can be machine graded. Essays must be read and graded by humans. I was a little surprised to see the subject tests going away, but as I’ve thought about it it makes sense. The Subject Tests allowed colleges to get a sense of a student’s knowledge in some specific content areas. However, they already had a way to do this in place. The College Board also publishes AP tests which students use to demonstrate what they’ve learned at the completion of AP courses. So, really, these tests largely do the same thing as Subject Tests. For the most part, colleges have told me in the past they don’t consider AP exam scores in the admission process. I think there is a good chance this will begin to shift in the absence of subject tests. That might be especially true for schools that previously required subject tests.