Giving College Credit Where It Is Due: Advanced Placement Exam Scores and College Outcomes

Jonathan Smith, Michael Hurwitz and Christopher Avery
Additional contact information
Michael Hurwitz: College Board
Christopher Avery: Harvard University

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: We implement a regression discontinuity design using the continuous raw Advanced Placement (AP) exam scores, which are mapped into the observed 1-5 integer scores, for over 4.5 million students. Earning higher AP integer scores positively impacts college completion and subsequent exam taking. Specifically, attaining credit-granting integer scores increases the probability that a student will receive a bachelor's degree within four years by 1 to 2 percentage points per exam. We also find that receiving a score of 3 over a 2 on junior year AP exams causes students to take between 0.06 and 0.14 more AP exams senior year.

Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1192

Related works:
Journal Article: Giving College Credit Where It Is Due: Advanced Placement Exam Scores and College Outcomes (2017)
Working Paper: Giving College Credit Where it is Due: Advanced Placement Exam Scores and College Outcomes (2015)
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:ecl:harjfk:rwp15-021

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().