Study: AP Classes Alone Don’t Aid College Work

There is no evidence that high school students who enroll in college-level courses such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes improve their academic performance in college unless they take the tests offered at the end of each course, says a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Universities may need to reconsider the manner in which such courses are treated in competitive admissions, say the authors of the study, Saul Geiser and Veronica Santelices, both education researchers at Berkeley.

The researchers examined the role of AP and similar high school courses for 81,445 freshmen at the University of California’s eight undergraduate campuses between fall 1998 and fall 2001. They examined admissions data about those students as well as first- and second-year grade point averages at the university...