A student is more marketable to colleges with high scores on Advanced Placement tests, but West Virginia only ranks 46th for the number who actually pass.
More high school students in West Virginia are earning college credit by taking AP exams.
Dr. Patrick Law, superintendent of Wood County Schools says AP exams are challenging, so you've got to have a very motivated student who is willing to work very hard to get that three, four or five on the test.
"West Virginia has not had a very large percentage of the population going to college, so that would translate to low numbers of people actually taking classes in high school to count as credit for college," Law says.
He says the positive is those numbers are increasing, in fact pretty significantly over just ten years ago. He adds that we're headed in the right direction but still have a long way to go.
