Piloted in 1952 and published in 1955 by CollegeBoard, the Advanced Placement program initially included only 11 subjects. In 2025, CollegeBoard now offers over 40 tests. In 2010, 3.21 million AP exams were taken by students. This year, the total nearly doubled to over 6.25 million.
Recent additions include AP Precalculus and AP African American Studies, and upcoming courses like AP Networking are set to be implemented soon under CollegeBoard’s new AP Career Kickstart program.
The program aims to expand the current AP program by preparing high school students for high-demand jobs. These include AP Cybersecurity, AP Networking and AP Business with Personal Finance.
Kickstart emphasizes “employer-endorsed credentials” and possible college credit, essentially a “kill two birds with one stone” deal, allowing students to earn college credit while simultaneously preparing for the workforce.
But the rapid expansion of AP courses doesn’t help at schools like SHS. Rather, it depreciates the value of non-AP courses and raises the bar for standing out in college applications. As a result, high-achieving students feel forced to take more and more AP classes as they seek to burnish their college applications. What once was a distinguishing academic record becomes average or below average in a never-ending game of trying to gain a leg up.
Temple University professor Joshua Klugman, author of “The Advanced Placement Arms Race and the Reproduction of Educational Inequality,” calls this the “AP arms race.” Saratoga High offers roughly 23 AP courses, far above the national high school average of about eight. But in the coming years, will that number need to increase to 25, 30 or beyond to satisfy students and their parents?
Additionally, admission surveys from the National Association for College Admission Counseling show that “strength of the curriculum” ranks as one of the top factors in admissions decisions, which fuels the demand for competitive students stacking more APs into course schedules.
Even CollegeBoard’s head of the Advanced Placement program, Trevor Packer, admitted in Education Week that some students “take a large number of AP courses,” despite research showing how academic benefits decrease logarithmically after about five exams.
Profits, though CollegeBoard is a registered nonprofit, may also be a factor. As AP exams taken rose from 2010 to 2025, testing now brings in roughly $500 million each year, aiding the expansion of AP courses and sustaining high student participation.
When it comes to the growing number of AP exams, cost also quickly rises as a significant barrier for many teens and their parents. At SHS, exams are priced at $125 per exam this school year, and the fees add up fast. For example, the funds required to take five exams quickly exceed $625 once a student includes late-order charges, cancellation fees, score reports and prep materials.
Even if a student successfully planned and finished processing the payments for all of their AP exams in advance, AP Exams taken outside of school are even more expensive. When SHS doesn’t offer a test and students must register elsewhere, host sites may add administration or proctoring fees, further increasing costs for students taking multiple exams.
The commitment to taking five or more exams comes with the pressure to achieve scores of 4 or 5. Because AP courses mirror entry-level college classes, they demand steady reading, labs, writing and timed practice outside of class.
While national surveys track overall homework time rather than AP-specific hours, the workload grows quickly when students stack multiple AP classes alongside other classes and extracurriculars. A common choice among many SHS students, the coursework overload often leads to chronic stress and disrupts sleep.
Especially for students in under-resourced areas who support their families by working part time or handling family responsibilities, adding more APs means giving up sleep, covering extra exam fees and risking dropping other commitments, all to stay up with already-high college admission standards.
No matter how unhealthy it is for teens, the list of APs will likely continue to grow, with new courses added every year to match the shifting job markets and academic trends. Though CollegeBoard’s new approach hopes to expand AP subjects toward profession-based skills while preparing students to head into the workforce, diversifying the AP course roster might have the downside of leading students to choose APs by quantity rather than quality.
Ultimately, the value of APs comes from how wisely students pick them: whether they strengthen a student’s learning, align with their passions and goals or provide usable credit in college. But what once represented opportunity now instead is just another pressure point for students — one which continues to worsen as CollegeBoard’s AP program strays further from its original purpose almost 75 years ago.
