The College Board Advanced Placement Program allows high school students to take college-level courses and if an appropriate score on an exam is received, college credit is earned. While the program has had its detractors (access in rural and inner-city schools, lack of diversity, pre-selection of talented students, poor articulation with actual college course work, etc.), it has had tremendous growth throughout the country. In this study, pre-college criteria, high school rank and SAT score were used to categorize students. Therefore, students with similar abilities could be compared, with the only difference being earned advanced placement credit. Regardless of ethnicity, gender, class rank or SAT score, students with advanced placement earned higher first semester college GPAs than their counterparts with similar high school academic characteristics, but who lacked advanced placement credit. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)