Advanced Placement

What to Know About AP Credit and Placement and AP Score Sends

College Board

  • June 7, 2021
  • Last Updated April 19, 2023

With the AP Exam administrations coming soon, you need to understand how AP credit and advanced placement work, and how to send your AP Exam scores to colleges.

 

AP Credit and Placement

You can earn college credit, advanced placement, or both with your AP Exam scores, depending on the policy of the colleges you’re interested in. Here are the differences:

  • Credit: You can graduate college early and save money on tuition by earning credit through AP Exam scores. You need a certain number of credits (usually 120 for a bachelor’s degree), and more colleges than ever before offer credit for your AP scores.
  • Advanced Placement: You can skip certain introductory courses and gain placement in more advanced courses through your AP scores.

Some colleges offer you the chance to both earn credit and skip a course (i.e., after gaining advanced placement) with a qualifying AP score.

Search colleges you’re interested in or planning to attend to find out about their credit and placement policies. Check out more information about specific state credit policies and websites below. 

 

Sending Scores

Every year you take AP Exams, you can send one score report for free to the college, university, or scholarship organization of your choice. Taking advantage of this opportunity each year allows more colleges or scholarship organizations to learn about how hard you’ve worked at college-level courses. Score reports include this year’s and prior year’s AP Exam scores.

Not sure how to send your AP scores? Send them for free by June 20—here’s how:

  • Sign in to your AP Classroom account using your College Board username and password.
  • Go to My AP Profile. Select the Score Send tab.
  • Type in the name of a college or university. When the name appears on the list, select it. Hit Save.

If you’d like to send scores after June 20, you’ll be charged a fee.

Remember—to get college credit, you need to choose to send your official AP score report. If you’re a senior, be sure to note the AP score deadlines for the college you’re planning to attend so you don’t lose the opportunity to send your scores. As a reminder, scores will start to be released in July.

 

State Policies

Most, but not all, states have a statewide AP credit policy for public colleges and/or universities. To learn more about what some state policies look like, check out the links below. Whether or not your state is listed, use our AP Credit Policy Search tool to learn about the specific AP credit policies of schools you’re interested in. Most four-year colleges and universities in the United States—and many institutions in more than 100 other countries—grant credit, advanced placement, or both for qualifying AP Exam scores. This means you can save time, money, and get a head start on your education when you enter college with credit you earned through AP. 


Learn more about AP Exam scores.

 

 

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