How would the British curriculum compare to the APs/IB system for US universities?Answered
I am an international student in the British system. I mostly use CV to check if my extracurriculars are on track since we don't have GPAs and don't take AP/IB/Honours classes. I can't find any solid information on how A Levels are taken into account by universities.
In case it's relevant, I take Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and Art, all to A2 not just AS.
Some websites say they're equivalent to APs, but A Levels are 2-year courses so I'm a bit doubtful of that comparison. Also, my Physics class seems to be similar to Physics (Algebra-based) and Physics (Mechanics) combined. Same with Maths being similar to Statistics, Mechanics, and Calculus.
I've also been cautioned against trying to find the US equivalents since you can't really compare systems, but CV and every other chancing site I've found only uses AP/IB/Honours.
Does anyone know any reliable metrics or resources to calculate chances for A Levels?
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1 answer
I found out something called the UCAS Tariff Calculator which is a concordance tool between A levels and IBs. Here is it.
https://www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator
There is nothing I see online between an A Level and a AP Course.
I did however some documentation that describes in detail the differences between APs and IBs.
https://brooklynlatin.enschool.org/pdf/AP%20vs%20IB%20report.pdf
Since A Levels are not used by the American School system, you are not going to find any sort of chancing calculator for getting into American Unis with A levels. However if you figure out what your IBs are worth equivalently and then convert them to APs, you can figure out what your A-Level to APs are. It should not be so hard since the A Levels are a 1-9 Scale, the IBs are a 1-7 Scale and the APs are a 1-5 Scale. Off the top of my head a 1/2 A-level score would be a 1 AP, 3/4 would be a 2, 5 would be a 3, 6/7 would be a 4 AP, and 8/9 would be a 5 AP. Something like that.
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