The Role of Advanced Placement and Honors Courses in College Admissions

Saul Geiser and Veronica Santelices

University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley

Abstract: This study examines the role of Advanced Placement (AP) and other honors-level courses as a criterion for admission at a leading public university, the University of California, and finds that the number of AP and honors courses taken in high school bears little or no relationship to students’ later performance in college. AP is increasingly emphasized as a factor in admissions, particularly at selective colleges and universities. But while student performance on AP examinations is strongly related to college performance, merely taking AP or other honors-level courses in high school is not a valid indicator of the likelihood that students will perform well in college. These findings suggest that institutions may need to reconsider the use of AP as a criterion in “high stakes” admissions, particularly given the marked disparity in access to AP and honors courses among disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students.

Keywords: Higher Education; Admissions; Testing; Advanced Placement; Affirmative Action; Minority Enrollment; Eligibility in the Local Context; University of California (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-07-01
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/3ft1g8rz.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt3ft1g8rz

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().