Offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Beaver Works Summer Institute is an intensive pre-college summer program, running roughly for 160 hours in a four-week period.

BU calls RISE highly competitive and selective: about 190 students attended in 2025, chosen from thousands of applicants, and BU publishes no acceptance rate.

UC asks first-year applicants to answer four of eight personal insight questions, each in 350 words or fewer, and no prompt carries more weight.

Crimson Education can be worth it if you want one team to handle your whole application, but get the price and terms in writing before you commit.

Cornell admitted 6,077 of 72,523 applicants for fall 2025, an 8.38% acceptance rate, and enrolled 3,827. Early Decision admitted 1,889 of 10,057, an 18.78% rate.

Columbia College and Columbia Engineering admitted 2,946 of 59,611 applicants for fall 2025, an overall acceptance rate of 4.94%.

MIT's published admissions report lists 1,334 admits from 29,281 applicants, a 4.6% acceptance rate.

Princeton's fall 2025 acceptance rate was 4.4%: 1,868 admits from 42,303 applicants. Its yield was 75.4%.

UChicago's institution-linked fall 2025 Common Data Set records 2,039 admits from 45,533 applicants, or a calculated 4.48% acceptance rate.

Caltech's fall 2025 acceptance rate was 3.79% (428 admits from 11,285 applicants), and its yield was 57.94% (248 enrolled from 428 admitted), according to its 2025-26 Common Data Set.

NYU's 2025-26 Common Data Set reports 10,340 admits from 114,125 fall 2025 applicants, a 9.1% acceptance rate.

Harvard's Class of 2029 admitted 2,003 of 47,893 applicants, a 4.18% acceptance rate. Its yield was about 83.6% (1,675 enrolled).

Penn admitted 3,570 of 72,544 fall 2025 applicants, a 4.92% acceptance rate, and enrolled 2,420, a 67.8% yield.

Beyond the general sense that AP classes "look good," there are several concrete, specific benefits worth understanding on their own terms, since they matter in different ways depending on your goals.

Taking an AP class does not add points to a score sheet somewhere. It changes what an admissions officer can actually conclude about you, and it does that through a few specific, understandable mechanisms rather than one mysterious black box.

AP is not one subject. It is a portfolio of 42 different courses spanning seven broad categories, from studio art to computer science to Latin. Knowing how they are actually organized makes it much easier to plan a course load that fits your interests rather than picking names off a list at random.

Most students study for AP exams the same way they study for everything else: re-reading notes and highlighting the textbook. That approach feels productive, and it is one of the least effective methods for actually retaining material long enough to use it in May.

Most students find AP resources the hard way, by asking around or stumbling onto them in a group chat. Here is the actual landscape, sorted by what is official, what is free, and what is worth paying for.

Yes, and it happens more often than you might expect! The bigger question is not whether a 9th grader is allowed to take an AP class, but which one actually makes sense that early.

If you’re an AP student in high school, this is a question you should know the answer to! There is no published number, and any specific figure you see quoted online is someone's estimate, not an official requirement. What Ivy League schools actually say about this, directly, is worth reading before trusting a number.