Advanced Placement

It seems perfectly apt to me, after the end of a school year, to talk about AP classes. Good ole high school days, right?

My high school only generally allowed juniors and seniors to take AP courses (but even in junior high, people could take honors or pre-AP classes). Every year, I tried to max out my schedule with some kind of weighted class.

But why?

First, I wanted a perfect GPA. Doesn’t a 5.0 sound nice (especially in comparison to a dull 4.0 or a 3.something or other)? Sure, I knew that it wouldn’t mean anything for college (PRO-tip: college admissions unweight or reweight weighted grades as they see fit, of course, so as to not give anyone and unfair advantage due to their high school’s bureaucracy.) But…much like in video games…bigger numbers just feel psychologically better (experiment: if you play an RPG, analyze how many games feature hit points in the hundreds as opposed to the thousands…)

OK, so that was my bad answer. I have a worse one. Or rather…my pseudo-intellectual elitist answer. Quite simply, honors and AP classes were the only thing that even resembled challenge at the high school level. This isn’t to say that AP classes were particularly grueling…but I remember taking a few non-honors classes. To say the least, they depressed me about the state of education. I’m sure anyone who has compared their school’s AP or IB classes with the non-honors classes can tell of similar stories (assuming, of course, they don’t go to a completely higher caliber school in the first place.)

Another answer that seemed somewhat acceptable to me at first was the economic one: AP credits are a very worthwhile investment. AP classes lead to AP tests, and AP tests lead to AP test credits. At least…ideally. I entered college with 38 hours of credit (mostly AP credits but with 6 hours of dual enrollment) — to put that into perspective, I entered as a sophomore. Furthermore, that’s not even the best possible setup…others I knew entered as juniors.

There was a problem with this philosophy, however. Many students have dreams of going to super-prestigious schools…and in current years, these super-prestigious schools are less and less likely or willing to accept AP or IB credit (they have several reasons, many of which may be completely justified so that’s not the point). What worth is taking an AP or IB class and actually risking a lower grade when it will not offer any advantage?

I go back to my “worse” answer. Once again, AP classes are probably the most challenging opportunity at most schools, so academically-minded students (and especially those that dream to attend Ivy League or equivalent schools) have a duty to challenge themselves as much as possible.

Seriously…how pathetic is it if you take basketweaving? No offense to basketweavers…but that’s what extracurricular activities are for. In fact, if you start a basketweaving class at your school instead of wasting one of your hours taking a course, you look more impressive. PRO-tip 2: extracurricular activities are your friend when you’re trying to distinguish yourself from every other 5.0 student out there.

That being said, something I see people do is that they take AP classes, pass the AP tests…and then take the course over in college even though their credit counts. Most of the time, they expect to breeze through the class in question to easily cushion their grades…but sometimes, they are proven wrong. With disastrous effects for their grades. If you have AP/IB/CLEP/dual enrollment credits, why would you throw them out the window?