Newport Harbor High School understands the value of offering advanced placement (AP) courses for their students and strives to provide a broad range of AP courses to meet its students' needs. Our students who complete AP courses and the end of the year AP exam send a powerful message to colleges and universities: Our students are ready for college! Very often, enrolling in and passing the exams assists students in gaining admission, earning college credits, and enabling students to start off at college taking more advanced courses.

In 2003, 14 AP courses were offered; today Harbor offers 17 AP courses. In 2003, 595 AP exams were taken; in 2008, 950 AP exams were taken. In 2003, the passage rate on the exams was 64.2%. In 2008, an all-time high passage rate reached 72%.

Newport Harbor High School has also made efforts to encourage more students (whether or not they are currently pursuing higher education) to make themselves eligible to take AP courses on our campus. Since 2003, Harbor's participation rate in these courses has increased by over 68%.

Currently over 1/5 of our faculty has been approved to teach AP courses on our campus by successfully submitting syllabi that annually meets the College Board's AP course criteria. These courses are designed and updated every year to reflect what is being taught in leading-edge college/university courses. Students receive an external evaluation - the AP exam - which is scored by college faculty from around the world who verifies the student has mastered college-level studies. For some colleges, AP course grades are weighted:  a student who is in an AP course earns 5 credits versus a student who receives an A in a standard course earns 4 credits. This explains how students are able to achieve higher than a 4.0 GPA. Honors and AP courses are more difficult and comprehensive than standard high school courses.  The subject matter in these courses extends beyond the standard curriculum, and is approved by the University of California system.