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AP School Honor Roll

The AP School Honor Roll recognizes schools doing outstanding work to welcome more students into AP courses.

School Recognition Program Launched in 2023

The AP School Honor Roll recognizes schools whose AP programs are delivering results for students while broadening access. Schools can earn this recognition annually based on criteria that reflect a commitment to increasing college-going culture, providing opportunities for students to earn college credit, and maximizing college readiness.

The AP School Honor Roll offers four levels of distinction: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Qualifying Criteria

For a school to be recognized on the AP School Honor Roll in a given year, it must:

Meet each of the following criteria for their students in the most recent graduating class; these criteria are anchored in research-based relationships between AP and college outcomes:
- College Culture: 40% or more of the graduating cohort took at least 1 AP Exam during high school.
- College Credit: 25% or more of the graduating cohort scored a 3 or higher on at least 1 AP Exam during high school.
- College Optimization: 2% or more of the graduating cohort took 5 or more AP Exams during high school. At least 1 of those exams was taken in 9th or 10th grade, so that students are spreading their AP experience across grades rather than feeling disproportionate pressure in any single year. 
Have full-time grade-12 enrollments. AP coordinators can update this information online in AP Registration and Ordering. Learn how.
Be located within the United States (including U.S. territories) or Canada.

How to Be Considered

Schools don’t need to apply for the AP School Honor Roll.

To be considered for the AP School Honor Roll (announced in October), AP coordinators should make sure their school’s data for schoolwide 12th-grade enrollment is correctly entered into AP Registration and Ordering. This part of the AP Participation Form can be updated throughout the school year. This can also be found on the School Information and Participation Contacts screen under Settings. Make sure that the school year is first switched to the correct year by selecting the year next to the school name on the AP Registration and Ordering homepage.

To have their schools included in the public list of 2024-25 recipients, AP coordinators need to enter this data by August 31, 2025.

For detailed instructions on how to update enrollment data, read this FAQ.

If a school does not wish to be considered for the AP School Honor Roll, the AP coordinator should leave this data field blank. If your school does not have a 12th grade, enter zero. This field can continue to be updated even after your information has been submitted.

AP Access Award

Schools on the AP School Honor Roll may also earn the AP Access Award, honoring schools that demonstrate a clear and effective commitment to equitable access to advanced coursework. Schools earn the additional award if the percentage of AP Exam takers who are underrepresented minority and/or low-income students mirrors the school's overall student demographics. For example, if 50% of a school's student body is low income, then 50% of the AP Exam takers must also be low income for a school to receive the AP Access Award. 

To be considered for this additional award, AP coordinators should make sure their school’s percentage of free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) student population data is correctly entered into AP Registration and Ordering. This is a part of the AP Participation Form and can be updated throughout the school year. This can also be found on the School Information and Participation Contacts screen under Settings. Make sure that the school year is set to the correct year by selecting the year next to the school name on the AP Registration and Ordering homepage. Note that if you are a CEP school you may select the “My school has adopted the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) for the current academic year” option, and a proxy percentage of 75% will then be used in the award calculation.

If a school does not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award, the AP coordinator should leave the percent of qualifying FRPL students field blank. Schools may still be considered for the AP School Honor Roll even if they do not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award.

Receiving Recognition

AP coordinators, principals, and other school and district administrators can view a school’s status on the AP School Honor Roll Progress Report by signing in to AP Score Reports for Educators. Honor Roll schools can also download a kit to help celebrate their recognition with their community.

For schools also earning the AP Access Award, the AP School Honor Roll Progress Report will reflect that recognition as well.

District administrators with access to AP Score Reports for Educators can view a district aggregate version of the AP School Honor Roll Progress Report with the status of all their schools at a glance.

FAQ

What has changed from the 2019 awards and recognition to the current AP School Honor Roll?

With the introduction of the AP School Honor Roll, individual schools now receive recognition for achievement in three categories of AP participation and performance. These three categories are grounded in evidence-based relationships between AP and college outcomes. Schools will soon be able to track their success through a dashboard located in their AP Score Reports for Educators.

In 2019 and previous years, we only recognized districts overall, not individual schools. Districts earned recognition on the AP District Honor Roll by increasing access to AP for underrepresented students while simultaneously maintaining or increasing the percentage of students earning AP Exam scores of 3 or higher.

Which students and scores are included in my 12th-grade AP cohort?

When determining a school’s 12th-grade cohort we look at the most recent school that a student indicated on their AP registration as the school they attend full time. Students are counted toward your school's Honor Roll metrics only if they are full-time enrolled students at your school. This means that when a student registered to take AP Exams, they indicated that your school was their primary attending school, and they have not since transferred schools or updated their attendance to a different school when taking an AP Exam.

If a student took AP Exams at your school in 11th grade, and then transferred out of your school prior to 12th grade and never took AP again at any school, then they will still be included in your AP dataset. However, if a student took AP Exams at your school in 11th grade, and then transferred out of your school prior to 12th grade and enrolled at a different school where they took AP then they would not be included in your 12th-grade AP cohort.

If a student is receiving instruction from a teacher at your school for a specific subject but does not attend your school full time, then they would not be included in your 12th-grade AP cohort count. If a student is attending your school full time, their entire AP Exam-taking history during high school is included in the data used to calculate the school honor roll. Note that exams taken prior to 9th grade are not included.

My 12th grade AP cohort count is not what I expected. How do I check if all 12th grade students in the most recent exam administration have been included?

If you believe that a student is excluded from your most recent 12th- grade enrolled student count, an “incorrect attending school” may be the root cause. A student may not appear in your reports if they selected the wrong school during the registration process or transferred schools midyear and did not update their registration. You can have your AP coordinator or principal submit a request to add a student via the Administrator Tools available on the website to correct this issue. As part of our commitment to protecting student data, once your request has been received, we will reach out to the student to give them the opportunity to review and confirm or deny your request. Because of this, a response to your request may take longer than our usual timeframe of 7–10 business days. Note that any data corrections can only be applied to students who took an exam in the most recent exam administration.

How do I update my school’s 12th-grade total student population data?

Your school’s AP coordinator can update enrollment data by logging in to AP Registration and Ordering and following these steps:

Navigate to the AP Registration and Ordering view.
Select the appropriate school year from the dropdown. You may make updates to these data for both the prior school year and the current school year.

Navigate to Settings and expand the School Information and Participation Contacts section.
Scroll to the Student Population fields and choose Edit.

Make updates in the displayed prompt and click Save.

Changes to the data for the 2023-24 school year may be made through June 24, 2025. However, to have their schools included in the public list of 2023-24 AP School Honor Roll recipients, AP coordinators need to enter this data by August 31, 2024.

If your school does not wish to be considered for the AP School Honor Roll, your AP coordinator should leave your 12th-grade enrollment field blank. If your school does not have a 12th grade, your coordinator should enter zero. Your coordinator can continue to update this field even after your school's information has initially been submitted.

These data are also used for the AP Equity and Excellence report in AP Score Reports for Educators. If you decide not to provide these numbers for your school, the corresponding fields on your school’s AP Equity and Excellence Report will also be blank.

What is the source of the data used for the AP Access Award?

An additional award is given to schools on the AP School Honor Roll when the percentage of underrepresented and/or low-income students who took at least one AP Exam before graduation is near, or greater than, the percentage in the school's graduating class, demonstrating a clear and effective commitment to AP equity. The race/ethnicity data used to determine this award is based on (1) a student’s self-reported race/ethnicity data, and (2) a school’s race/ethnicity data from the most recent final dataset from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Low-income data is sourced from a student’s fee-reduction eligibility status as input by the AP coordinator in AP Registration and Ordering. If at any point in high school, a student qualified for a fee-reduced AP Exam, they would be included in the low-income count for the school. The school’s overall free and reduced-price lunch student percentage used in this award calculation is also provided by the AP coordinator in AP Registration and Ordering during initial school year setup on the School Information and Participation Contacts setup screen.

How do I update my school’s free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) student percentage that is used in determining eligibility for the additional AP Access Award?

To update this data, an AP coordinator may log in to AP Registration and Ordering and follow these steps:

Navigate to the AP Registration and Ordering view.
Select the appropriate school year from the dropdown. You may make updates to this data for both the prior school year and the current school year.
Navigate to Settings.
Expand the School Information and Participation Contacts section.
Scroll to the FRPL Students field and choose Edit.
Make updates in the displayed prompt and click Save.

Note that this is different from marking individual student AP Exams as fee-reduced. You are providing the overall percentage of students at your school who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, not just AP students qualifying for fee reductions. If you select the “My school has adopted the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) for the current academic year” option, then a proxy percentage of 75% will be used in the award calculation.

Changes to the data for the 2023-24 school year may be made through June 24, 2025. However, to have their schools included in the public list of 2023-24 recipients, AP coordinators need to enter this data by August 31, 2024.

If you do not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award, leave the percent of qualifying students field blank. Schools may still be considered for the AP School Honor Roll even if they do not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award. This field can continue to be updated even after your information has been submitted.

Why are schools outside of the U.S. and Canada not eligible to be considered for the AP School Honor Roll?

Schools outside the U.S., U.S. Territories, DoDEA, and Canada are not currently eligible for the AP School Honor Roll. The AP School Honor Roll depends upon external data inputs that are currently not available or measurable for ineligible schools. We are considering ways to acknowledge in the future the superb quality of AP programs in schools outside the U.S. and Canada.

How can I learn more about the research behind the AP School Honor Roll criteria?

The AP School Honor Roll criteria are anchored in research-based relationships between AP and college outcomes.

College Culture: We recognize schools for increasing AP participation because students who take AP courses and exams become part of a college-going culture. These students are more likely to attend college than academically similar students who didn’t take AP, and this is true even of students who earn exam scores of 1 or 2. In addition, research finds that the biggest predicted boost in first-year college grades and on-time degree attainment is associated with AP participation changing from 0 to 1 AP Exam. Learn more here and here.

College Credit: We also recognize schools for helping students earn scores of 3 or higher, the score most typically used by colleges to award college credit. Research indicates that students who earn a score of 3 or higher on AP Exams proceed to achieve higher overall first-year college GPAs and are more likely to earn their bachelor’s degrees on time—avoiding the costs of the additional semester(s) of college tuition and expenses that most American students now incur before attaining their degree. Learn more here and here.

College Optimization: Finally, we place attention on students taking 5 AP Exams across their high school career because research finds that this is an optimal number of AP Exams for many students. Specifically, for each additional AP Exam a student takes—up to but not beyond 4–6 AP Exams—predicted first-year college grades and on-time degree attainment rates improve. Taking more than a total of 4–6 AP Exams in high school does not further improve a student’s college GPA and college graduation outcomes. Accordingly, the AP School Honor Roll does not provide added distinction for students taking more than 5 AP exams. Learn more here. Further, this metric only includes students who took at least 1 of their 5 AP Exams in grades 9 or 10. This is designed to reduce the pressure on students to load up on AP Exams in their junior and senior years.

Why do students who took at least 5 AP Exams—but only in grades 11 and 12—not count toward the College Optimization metric?

A school’s College Optimization level is calculated by totaling the number of students who took at least 5 AP Exams in high school—with at least 1 taken in grades 9 or 10. The metric reflects evidence that students continue to improve their college outcomes with each AP Exam they take up to five; beyond five, additional APs do not statistically improve a student’s likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree on time. Additionally, we believe that students should not feel pressure to load up on AP Exams in their junior and senior years. Rather than balance 3 or more AP Exams in a single year, students who take AP in grades 9 or 10 are able to optimize their AP participation across high school while never shouldering more than 2 AP Exams in the same year.

How do I indicate that my school does not want to be considered for the AP Access Award?

If you do not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award, please leave your percentage of qualifying students for free and reduced- price lunch blank in the School Information and Participation Contacts setup screen in AP Registration and Ordering. Note that schools can still be considered for the AP School Honor Roll even if they do not wish to be considered for the AP Access Award.

Will the school recognition be shared with students and parents?

A complete list of AP School Honor Roll recipients is posted on AP Central in the fall.

Beyond that, each individual school and district should determine their local media and communications plan for celebrating this achievement. The AP Program provides an electronic celebration kit that includes a formal cover letter, certificate of recognition, and social media/webpage badges that can be used on the school profile and in any locally developed banners, signage, or other collateral. This can be downloaded from the AP Score Reports for Educators site in the same place that the progress report can be viewed and downloaded.

See the 2023-24 AP School Honor Roll recipients.

When I view my AP School Honor Roll Progress Report, I see a message that says “Data for this organization are not available for the selected year.” What does this mean?

This means that there is no AP score data for any students in the 12th-grade graduating class at your school for the selected year. This can occur in the case of middle schools that have no 12th grade, and virtual schools that have no full-time attending students. This can also occur if there were no 12th graders in the selected year who have taken an AP Exam in high school.

When I view my AP School Honor Roll Progress Report, I see a message that says “This percentage could not be calculated: your school did not provide 12th-grade enrollment data for the YYYY-YY school year or it was reported as zero.” What does this mean?

To determine a school’s standing on the honor roll we must know what the overall grade 12 student enrollment population is at your school. This school-level student population data would have been submitted by your AP coordinator in AP Registration and Ordering during initial school year setup on the School Information and Participation Contacts setup screen under Settings. Your AP coordinator should check that the correct data is provided in AP Registration and Ordering at the start of each school year.

You may also be seeing this message if your school does not have any 12th-grade students; in this case, your school is not eligible for the AP School Honor Roll. Your AP coordinator may also have left this field blank to indicate that the school would like to opt-out of the recognition in the given year.

Can my district see which of our schools earned recognition on the AP School Honor Roll?

Yes. District administrators can see their individual schools’ results. District administrators with access to AP Score Reports for Educators may log in and view the progress report for each of their individual schools to see which schools earned a place on the AP School Honor Roll. District administrators can also access an aggregated view of this report showing all schools in their district with each school’s status on the AP School Honor Roll.

A complete list of AP School Honor Roll recipients is also posted on AP Central in the fall. See the 2023-24 AP School Honor Roll recipients.

Schools can also share their honor roll recognition with their district and state leadership. The AP Program provides an electronic celebration kit that can be downloaded by schools and districts from the same place as the progress report and includes a formal cover letter, certificate of recognition, press release template, and social media/webpage badges that can be used on the school profile and in any locally developed banners, signage, or other collateral.

My AP School Honor Roll Progress Report is showing that my school earned a different recognition level since the last time I reviewed it. Why is that the case?

The AP School Honor Roll Progress Report in AP Score Reports for Educators always reflects the most recent data for your school. The report is based on your school population data as well as the exam participation and performance of your students. Therefore, if your AP coordinator has updated your school’s 12th-grade student population data in AP Registration and Ordering after you last viewed the report, your recognition level may have changed. Additionally, your recognition level may change over time if a student whose score was delayed has now been reported, or a student had duplicate student records that were merged.

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