AP School Honor Roll
Launched in 2023, the AP School Honor Roll recognizes schools whose AP programs are delivering results for students while broadening participation. 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, 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 November 20, 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.
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 K–12 Educators. Honor Roll schools can also download a kit to help celebrate their recognition with their community.
District administrators with access to AP Score Reports for K–12 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
When will the AP School Honor Roll be posted for the 2024-25 school year?
The 2025 AP School Honor Roll will be released in January 2026.
While the 2024 AP School Honor Roll announcement took place in October, this timing change allows us to complete enhancements to the program while continuing to recognize schools for supporting student success and expanding access to AP in 2024-25.
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 AP 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 2024-25 school year may be made through June 24, 2026. However, to have their schools included in the public list of 2024-25 AP School Honor Roll recipients, AP coordinators need to enter this data by November 20, 2025.
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 College Credit Report in AP Score Reports for K–12 Educators. If you decide not to provide these numbers for your school, the corresponding fields on your school’s College Credit Report will also be blank.
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 five 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 AP Exams 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.
Will the school recognition be shared with students and parents?
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 K–12 Educators site in the same place that the progress report can be viewed and downloaded.
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 as 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.
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 K–12 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.
What additional awards can schools on the AP School Honor Roll earn? Is the Access Award being awarded for 2024-25?
Updated information on additional awards will be posted on AP Central later this year.