The presence of an Advanced Placement class on a student's transcript may mean more than ever this coming admissions cycle.
In January, the College Board hired the Educational Policy Improvement Center to review the syllabi of every AP class taught around world to make sure they all include the courses' requirements. The AP Program offers college level courses to high school students in 37 subjects.
The impetus for this new policy came from the fact that high schools were appending "AP" onto the names of classes that did not have a corresponding AP exam offered by the College Board in May.
"Schools were putting the AP label on all kinds of courses," said David Conley, professor at the University of Oregon and director of the Educational Policy and Improvement Center. "Colleges would then think that that was [a] high-level course - and maybe it was, but maybe it wasn't."
Conley said that the syllabi are evaluated by seven different college professors who teach in the relevant subject area. The professors are then trained to score syllabi based on a set of rules.
"They can't just look at it and say they like it or they don't," he added.
If a teacher's syllabus is deemed unsatisfactory, the teacher can send it in twice more for further evaluation. If a syllabus is still not approved after this process, the school is not allowed to use "AP" in the course's title.
Penn Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson was not available to comment.
Greg Roberts, associate dean of admissions at the University of Virginia, said it was "rare" that he ever encountered a non-College Board class marked as AP.
He added that UVA tends not to value upper-level elective-type courses as much as traditional AP high school courses.
"We look for higher-level courses like chem, bio and physics," he said.
Roberts added that his office is "mainly looking at the five major disciplines," referring to English, science, math, history and a foreign language.
"If they had a choice between AP chem and an advanced elective," Roberts said, "we would like to see students take the AP chem."
He likened the difference between College Board APs and other advanced courses marked as AP to the difference between AP Psychology and AP Chemistry. Both classes are officially sanctioned College Board classes with corresponding exams, but AP Chemistry is regarded as more challenging.
But the College Board's program is not without its drawbacks, according to some.
Jeannie Borin, president of College Connections, a California-based college consulting company, says she warns students about the detriments of taking AP courses.
She makes sure that her students are aware that these courses do not offer a "very in-depth form of learning."
"AP courses are often taught to exams," she said. "It's not the why and how, but the who, what, when and where."
Borin also reminds her students that there are alternatives to the AP program.
"I explained that there are other ways of earning college credit, such as classes at a community college," she said.
