The AP course catalog is an array of classes offered in high schools that conclude with a college-level test of the materials taught. A high school student that earns an AP Exam score of 3 or higher, can present this score to a college. Many colleges offer some sort of credit for a qualifying AP score; Illinois’ public colleges and universities have come together to offer 100% credit for the coursework deemed to have been taken through the AP process and high exam scores.
Ongoing cooperation between Illinois’ public and private high schools, and its institutions of higher education, centered on AP coursework and the AP exam, have led to the widespread availability of AP courses in many Illinois high schools. Among members of the Illinois high school Class of 2022, 55,025 Illinois high school graduates took an AP exam, with almost two-thirds (36,240) scoring a place-out score of 3 or higher. This AP exam-taking subset of Illinois high school graduates was an increase of 42% over the less than 40,000 graduates who had taken a comparable exam ten years earlier. This 42% AP exam-taking increase far outpaced the 14% nationwide increase of AP exam-takers over the same 10-year period.
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) believes that this 42% increase in AP exam-takers was the most massive increase in this data point among the high school graduates of all 50 states.