Our local HS permits students to take as many APs as desired... which is only limited by the fact that the HS only offers 8. Well, actually 9, but you have to provide your own transportation to a different HS each day for the one AP not offered at our HS.
And just to make sure that they really stick it to the higher achievers, if you do manage to take that 9th AP class, it will count as though you had taken another class of PE or finger-painting with respect to the Quest for Valedictorian. Only the 1st 8 AP classes count as AP.
The 9th (& above) APs still get A=5 weighting for GPA purposes, but class ranking for Valedictorian, etc., is based on a system that assigns a point value for each class taken.
Getting an A in an AP class earns you 10 points, an A in normal college prep is 7 points, an A in regular class is 4 points. It's actually a decent system in that it avoids the nonsense where kids (parents?) figure out a way to skip PE, etc., in order to inflate their GPA as compared to kids to could not find a way to skip a class.
The system stinks for the kid who takes a 9th AP and gets a B. That B, now just a regular B, is worth 2 points toward class rank. But the kid who took Basket Weaving instead of APUSH and got an A will get 4 points, and the kid who took College-Prep Basket Weaving would get 7 points for his A.
(There's no limit on College Prep courses -- only AP.)
Way to encourage the kids! Yay!
