Taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses are a great way to demonstrate your ability to handle college work while earning course credit at the same time. There are many benefits to passing your AP exams such as taking fewer courses or leapfrogging prerequisites in college, which translates to less tuition.
However, not all universities will have the same policy regarding how AP exams are treated so here is a list featuring the top 30 universities.
| University | Scores Accepted | Course Credit | Course Placement |
| Princeton | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Harvard | 5 | No | No |
| Columbia | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| MIT | 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Yale | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Stanford | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| U. Chicago | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| U. Penn | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Northwestern | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Duke | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Johns Hopkins | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Cal Tech | N/A | Yes | No |
| Dartmouth | 4 or 5 | Yes | No |
| Brown | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | No |
| U. Notre Dame | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Vanderbilt | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Cornell | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Rice | 4 or 5 | No | Yes |
| Washington University | 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| UCLA | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| UC Berkeley | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| USC | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Georgetown | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Carnegie Mellon | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| U. Michigan | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Wake Forest | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| U. Virginia | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Georgia Tech | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| NYU | 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Tufts | 2, 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| UNC | 2, 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
| U. Rochester | 3, 4, or 5 | Yes | Yes |
