Why one of the country’s strongest college preparatory schools dropped the Advanced Placement label, and how colleges read a transcript without it.
Cardinal Education is an independent educational consulting company. We are not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any private or public school, including Lakeside School.
In This Guide
Quick Answer for Busy Parents
No. Lakeside School offers no Advanced Placement courses. It runs its own advanced and honors sequence instead, currently three advanced and eight honors courses, supplemented by Global Online Academy and School Year Abroad. Colleges evaluate applicants against the curriculum their school actually offers, so no AP is not a disadvantage at a school with Lakeside’s record. Ninety-nine percent of graduates enroll in college.
The Short Answer on AP at Lakeside
Lakeside does not offer Advanced Placement courses. Not a reduced selection, not a few holdouts in the sciences. None. For families who have spent years being told that AP count is the measure of a high school’s rigor, this reads as a problem, and it is usually the first question asked on a campus tour.
The reasoning is straightforward once stated. An AP course is taught toward an externally written examination, which constrains what a department can cover and how deeply. Schools with the faculty and the reputation to design their own sequences often conclude the tradeoff is not worth it. Lakeside is one of a group of well-regarded independent schools that reached that conclusion, and the decision says more about institutional confidence than about academic ambition.
What Lakeside Teaches Instead
The replacement is not a thinner curriculum. Lakeside runs three advanced and eight honors courses of its own design, taught by a faculty of whom between 83% and 85% hold advanced degrees, in classes averaging 17 students at a 9:1 ratio. Two external programs extend the range further. Global Online Academy gives students access to courses no single school could staff alone, and School Year Abroad sends students overseas for a full academic year.
Two graduation requirements sit outside the classroom entirely: a one-week Outdoor Program trip and at least 80 hours of service learning. Neither is optional, and both need planning into a four-year schedule the way an AP-heavy student would plan exam loads.
| The conventional rigor signal | What Lakeside offers instead |
| Number of AP courses taken | Three advanced and eight honors courses of the school’s own design |
| AP exam scores | Course grades in a curriculum built by the department teaching it |
| Breadth via AP catalog | Global Online Academy courses beyond what one school can staff |
| A year of AP language study | School Year Abroad, a full academic year overseas |
| Extracurriculars listed separately | An Outdoor Program trip and 80 service hours required to graduate |
| Class rank against AP-loaded peers | No AP arms race; a 9:1 ratio and 17-student average class |
Unsure how your child’s transcript will read?
Cardinal Education has spent twenty years helping families think about course selection and how admissions offices interpret it.
Schedule a Consultation
How Colleges Read a Transcript With No AP Courses
Selective colleges do not compare applicants against a national course catalog. They compare them against what was available at their own school, using the school profile every counselor submits alongside the transcript. That document states plainly that Lakeside offers no AP courses and describes what it offers instead. An admissions reader who sees a Lakeside transcript is not wondering where the AP courses went. Our overview of top college prep schools covers how this works across comparable schools.
The outcomes bear it out. Ninety-nine percent of Lakeside graduates enroll in college, and Niche’s 2026 rankings place the school first among 72 college preparatory private high schools in Washington and fifteenth of 4,143 nationally. A seven-person college counseling team, including dedicated essay specialists, supports students through the process.
One genuine consideration remains. AP examinations can convert into college credit or advanced placement once a student matriculates, and a student with no AP scores forgoes that. Some Lakeside students sit AP examinations independently for this reason. Whether it is worth doing depends entirely on where a student ends up and what that institution’s credit policy looks like, which is not knowable in ninth grade.
What This Means for Your Child’s Planning
If your family is choosing between Lakeside and a school with a deep AP catalog, the AP count is the wrong axis to decide on. The better questions are whether your child does well in small discussion classes, whether a required outdoor trip and 80 service hours sound energizing or burdensome, and whether they would rather sit an external exam or be assessed by the teacher who designed the course. Families weighing this typically also look at The Overlake School and University Prep.
If your child is already applying to Lakeside, the practical implication is that course selection at their current school still matters. Lakeside reads the first complete report card of the current year and the full prior-year transcript, and it wants to see a student taking a demanding load where one is available to them. No AP at Lakeside does not mean rigor stops mattering on the way in.
The Takeaway
The absence of AP courses at Lakeside is a deliberate curricular position, not a gap. Colleges read transcripts in the context of the school that produced them, and Lakeside’s context is well understood. Judge the school on whether its actual program suits your child, which is a harder and more useful question than counting courses.
Talk through the fit before you apply
We will give you a straight answer about whether Lakeside’s program matches how your child actually learns.
Contact Us