How To Register For The Ap Exam

Wondering how to register for AP classes and tests? Go a complete guide to AP registration here—even if you're homeschooled or your local schoolhouse doesn't have the AP program.

How to Register for AP Classes

The AP Registration process varies from school to school. Typically, you go through the regular form sign-upwards process to have APs, as long every bit you have taken the necessary pre-requisite classes. For example, many schools require students to take an introductory biology grade before they tin enroll in AP Biology. Your school's course catalog should list the necessary pre-requisites for each AP class.

In some schools, you lot take to pass a placement test to annals for an AP grade. For example, my schoolhouse required students to test into AP Calculus BC also equally AP Calculus AB – even if they had taken math up through Pre-Calculus. Based on your examination score, you were placed into either Calculus BC, Calculus AB, or regular (non-AP) Calculus.

We recommend request 1 of your current teachers or the guidance counseling office virtually how to sign upwards for AP Classes at your schoolhouse. They tin let you lot know if there are whatsoever specific protocols outside of your school's typical registration process, like placement tests or class size limits.

If y'all nourish a school without AP classes or you're homeschooled, you don't accept to officially register for an AP course. Yous just demand to register for the AP Exam later in the year (more on that below). It's up to you to either take a form that teaches most of the same material (east.1000., taking a United States History grade if you want to take the AP United States History exam) or to cocky-study during the twelvemonth.

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How to Annals for AP Tests

If You Nourish a School with AP Classes

If you lot're taking AP classes, your AP teacher typically alerts yous to your school'due south AP test sign-upwardly process. They should inform yous of the deadlines to register for the examination. Some fifty-fifty walk you through the registration procedure!

If y'all haven't heard anything from your AP teacher nonetheless or are just curious near your schoolhouse's AP test sign-upwards protocol, track downwards your school'southward AP Coordinator to observe out the dates and deadlines at your school.

AP Coordinator? Who's that? Each school that offers AP classes has a staff fellow member (ofttimes a guidance counselor) who is given this title. It's officially their job to handle AP test registration and coordinate with the College Board. If y'all don't know who this person is, either check in with your guidance counselor or one of your AP teachers, they should know.

Proceed in mind you have to register for AP exams through your school, there is no way to register online. (Some students get confused because other College Lath tests, similar the Sabbatum and SAT Subject tests, have online registration.)

Every bit function of your registration, yous'll plow in the $94 exam fee to the AP coordinator. And that cost is per exam, by the style. (See our post on AP Exam costs to learn about getting financial assist for AP tests!)

If Yous're Homeschooled or Your School Doesn't Have AP Classes

If y'all're homeschooled, or you attend a schoolhouse without the AP program and are self-studying, you can even so adapt to take AP Exams at a nearby participating AP school.

To exercise this, you'll contact the AP program itself. Contact AP Services no later than March 1st of the year you want to test, and they'll give you the names of local, participating AP schools willing to test exterior students, likewise every bit the phone number of the AP coordinator at that school.

This is the contact information for AP Services. Remember, yous accept to contact them to become the contact info of a local school that volition give yous the AP exams:

Phone: 888-225-5427
International callers: 212-632-1780
Fax: 610-290-8979
Email: apstudents@info.collegeboard.org

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Prepare a listing of the AP Exams yous are interested in taking earlier you phone call — this volition assistance Higher Board detect a school yous tin can examination at.

Once you get their info from AP Services, call the AP Coordinators at the local school no later than March 15th to prepare your testing.

When calling Coordinators to arrange testing, make sure to tell them the following:

That you got their contact information from College Lath.
That yous are trying to notice a school that volition give AP exams to homeschooled students or students from schools that do not offer AP Exams.
The AP exams you want to take.
If you have a documented disability that requires accommodations.

Once you locate a school that will host you, that schoolhouse'south AP Coordinator is responsible for ordering your exam materials, telling yous when and where to report for the exams, and collecting your fees (which may be higher than the typical $94 to encompass the school's additional proctoring or assistants costs).

One final affair: your host school must administer the exams for y'all. The schoolhouse cannot frontward the AP exams to yous or your school. That ways on exam days, you'll have to travel to your host schoolhouse (and be absent from your regular classes).

1 of the single almost important parts of your higher application is what classes you choose to take in high schoolhouse (in conjunction with how well yous do in those classes). Our team of PrepScholar admissions experts have compiled their noesis into this single guide to planning out your high school course schedule. We'll advise you on how to balance your schedule between regular and honors/AP/IB courses, how to choose your extracurriculars, and what classes y'all tin't beget non to take.

Plan Your Course Schedule

Some Additional Guidelines for Signing Up

Signing upwardly for AP classes and tests is usually straightforward. Plus, in that location aren't restrictions on how many classes y'all tin can accept each yr (unless your school has its ain rules). You can have as many AP Exams every bit can fit into your schedule. The AP Program doesn't even crave yous to accept an AP class earlier taking an AP Exam.

The simply restriction on registration from College Board is that yous can't accept both Calculus AB and Calculus BC within the same year. This is considering Calculus BC includes all of the textile in Calculus AB — you even become an AB Subscore when you take Calculus BC!

AP Calculus BC is essentially 2 math classes in one!

If two of the exams you want to take are scheduled for the same fourth dimension, enquire your school's AP Coordinator for information about taking 1 of the exams during the late-testing catamenia. The late-testing menses occurs in tardily May, to accommodate tests that overlap or students that run into terminal-minute bug similar an injury.

In general, popular AP exams don't tend to overlap, then you're more likely to run into this problem if you're taking a more than niche test like Fine art History or Japanese.

On Examination Day

Continue these guidelines in heed to make sure you lot are set up to test in May in one case you're registered!

You lot have to bring a valid government- or schoolhouse-issued photo ID with you to the examination. Fifty-fifty though the test is administered by your school, and all your teachers know you lot, you have to follow this rule. Yous'll be turned away without your ID, so don't forget it!

If you take approving from the Higher Board to test with accommodations, yous take to bring your Pupil Adaptation Letter.

If y'all attend a school that doesn't offer AP, you should non apply the school lawmaking for the schoolhouse where you are testing. Instead, make sure to use your ain school's code then your exam score(s) volition be reported to your school. This ways you need to get your school's vi-digit code from your principal or schoolhouse advisor before exam day.

If y'all are home-schooled, employ the land or international abode-school/self-study code that volition be given to y'all on the day of the examination.

What's Next?

Which AP exams should you have? Learn about the hardest and easiest tests, likewise as exactly how many AP classes you lot should have.

As well taking the SAT? Learn how to register for the SAT, when you should take the test for the first fourth dimension, and go a complete report guide.

Going for the Human activity instead? We take exclusive guides to studying for ACT Science, Reading, and English.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your Deed score by iv points? We've written a guide for each examination about the height 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

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About the Author

Halle Edwards graduated from Stanford Academy with honors. In high school, she earned 99th percentile ACT scores as well as 99th percentile scores on Saturday bailiwick tests. She also took 9 AP classes, earning a perfect score of 5 on seven AP tests. As a graduate of a big public high school who tackled the college admission process largely on her own, she is passionate nigh helping loftier school students from unlike backgrounds go the knowledge they demand to exist successful in the college admissions process.