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AP Classes: Worth It? MAG
You see them in the halls, in a daze, stumbling toward their classes. Their faces are ashen with fatigue; their spines are bent under the weight of a dozen textbooks. They are the ones struggling valiantly to stifle a yawn during class, the ones frantically rereading their notes before an exam on the nature of light photons during photosynthesis.
They are the few, the chosen. They are the AP students.
The truth is, honors students are no longer a select few. Over half of university-bound students take AP classes, and of these, most take at least two. The AP system drills into our brains that our college success hinges on taking as many advanced courses as possible, but is it really worth it? “On average, I spend three to four hours each day on homework,” says one senior, who is taking five AP classes. “With the number I’m taking, I really doubt that I will be confident going into each test.”
With increasing pressure to enroll in AP courses, not only for college credit but also for the weighted GPA, it is no wonder that students often find their grades suffering and their stress levels soaring. In reality, AP courses have become mere trophies, adding little more than volume and sparkle to a competitive college application.
One of the major flaws in the AP system is that every class is geared toward a standardized test. The result is that comprehensive learning is sacrificed for the sake of test preparation, with teachers spending the most time on topics likely to appear on the AP exam.
“It feels like sometimes we rush through material or ignore parts of the subject,” says one senior. “It would be nice to sit back and learn for the sake of learning, not just to get a five on the test in May.”
And just because a student receives a high grade on the AP test does not mean he or she will receive college credit. Many universities now don’t consider an AP class in high school to be synonymous with an actual undergraduate college-level class, which is usually a three-hour, lecture-based course with varying degrees of homework.
According to another AP student, “the sheer volume of learning” is what makes the workload so challenging. It is simply not feasible to absorb an entire college class in less than an hour a day, with all the other classes and responsibilities.
For those who wish to delve further into a particular subject, college-level classes may be a fantastic idea. But the current AP course system is flawed and too test-intensive to provide students with an optimum learning environment. Perhaps more high schools should consider offering their students the opportunity to take actual college courses through a local university.
Or maybe we should all just go to college.
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This article has 79 comments.
wow thats really intresting
More like stamina.
Not skill
Right.
And you say, "10 seniors graduated valedictorian."
Not all of us can take that amount of work and do it all year round. That takes an insane amount of skill.
Interesting piece. I know that my school adds a new scale for taking AP classes. Instead of a 4.0 you have a 5.0.
But the work isn't too hard. At my school, ten seionrs graduated valedictorian because of their perfect 5.0 GPA (which means they never took a single regular core class throughout high school) and all got free-rides to whatever school they wanted. The work can obviously be done, the question is just do you want to do all of it. In such a competetive world with colleges you need all the help you can get. The 10% of the senior class at my school this year had no lower than a 4.4 GPA which signifies taking at least one AP class. The colleges and universities may not actually take the scores and give you college credit, but if you want to get into a good school you need to finish high school well, and with a lot of schools you need at least one AP class to do that.
Word of advice: if you're a senior, and you KNOW your college doesn't take AP credits for anything other than admissions....don't do it.
My college doesn't even look at the scores. Just the class grade. So while it probably helped my admissions chances a little bit, the fact that I still have to take the test kind of eliminates any worth they had.
Not to mention the fact that I probably would have gotten more out of another elective than another AP English class. Lit and Lang are pretty darn similar in the end
I agree with almost everything you've said, but AP classes aren't that bad if you've been doing "advanced" work your entire school life. This is more of a response to the comments of this article. I'm Asian (for people who aren't familiar with the stereotypes, I'm an "overachiever") and I've been in honors/advanced programs my whole life. I started taking AP classes the first chance I got (I started with one in sophomore year). For people like me, taking all AP's or a lot of AP classes isn't that bad because we know how to pace ourselves. We were introduced to the workload of only one or two AP classes gradually. Now compare us with somebody who has had zero experience with AP classes and decides to jump in junior/senior year with a whole bunch of AP's. Of course they'll be drowning in work. I guess my point is, AP classes are not that hard if you know what you are doing. And, by the way, 3 to 4 hours spent on homework a night is a godsend (this is coming from someone who plays sports as well as takes AP classes).
I think taking AP classes is worth it if you come out successful in the end. Higher GPA's may not guarantee anything, but they certainly make it easier to get into colleges. And for people, like me, who think ahead, if you were working at, oh let's say Google, and you just looked at applications of college graduates who would you most likely hire, the graduate from MIT (or any top school) or a graduate from a random local school?
