The academic pitfalls of Saratoga: What AP classes are really worth

March 25, 2011 — by Deborah Soung

Junior Amanda Wu had never planned on taking two AP courses during her junior year in addition to her two honors courses and extracurriculars, which include badminton, soccer and SAT courses.

Junior Amanda Wu had never planned on taking two AP courses during her junior year in addition to her two honors courses and extracurriculars, which include badminton, soccer and SAT courses.

However, because of the constant pressure from her parents and tutors, she reluctantly signed up for AP Environmental Science and AP US History.

“My parents were always talking to me about how my brother took ‘this many APs,’ and then my SAT teacher told me that I should take APs to get into a good college,” said Wu.

She finds herself a victim of lack of sleep for much of the school year, especially around the AP testing season, and often feels exhausted during school days.

Wu feels that her parents pressured her to sign up for AP classes, and she is only one among several students who feel the same way.

“[Being pressured into taking AP courses] is so common here, and I think it makes the school more competitive,” said junior Jennifer Yang, “but sometimes people take more than they can handle or more than they want to handle.”

Though taking challenging courses is a healthy habit, there is a fine line between taking a suitable amount of challenging courses and overloading on those too difficult, said assistant principal Brian Safine.

“It’s very healthy and very appropriate for students to pick classes that fit their interests and fit their talents,” Safine said. “It’s unhealthy to blindly accelerate across the board with AP classes regardless of interest.”

Last year as a sophomore, Yang, who currently balances three AP courses, chose to sign up for AP U.S. History because her friends told her that “everybody” took the course.

“I wasn’t going to take AP US History at first because I’m not a history freak,” Yang said, “but then I asked one of my friends if it would be weird if I took US History regular, and she was like, ‘Take AP. I’m taking AP. Everyone is taking AP.’”

Although she does not feel particularly overloaded by her classes, Yang admits that there is a difference in difficulty between sophomore year, when students rarely take AP courses, to junior year.

“Everything is harder than it used to be,” Yang said. “You definitely need to spend more time reading your material and knowing it before you get to class.”

Another junior, who currently takes English 11 honors and AP US History and dropped AP biology, agrees with Yang.

“It’s a lot of stuff to know in biology since it’s so comprehensive,” she said. “There’s so much stuff, there’s lots of reading, and you spend a lot of time on AP Bio. It kind of cuts into everything you do because you spend so much time on the class.”

The junior did not feel pressured to take AP courses by her parents, who actually discouraged her from signing up for AP biology, but she did feel slightly pressured by her peers to take the course.

Because extra time must be spent preparing for AP courses, students who take multiple APs have to plan their schedules more carefully in order to study well for standardized tests.

Safine encourages students to challenge themselves with their courses, especially since the pass rate for AP scores has gone slightly up in the past years even though the school implemented an open access policy in English, history and science in 2004. Unfortunately, in the competitive environment of this school, taking too many AP courses can become a serious problem.

“The potential for [overloading on AP courses] definitely exists,” said Safine. “We’ve seen situations where students take four or five APs and then talk about the stress of completing that curriculum while applying to colleges as a senior, or completing that curriculum while taking standardized tests as a junior.”

Taking an AP course just for its extra GPA point is not a positive way for students to choose their classes, according to Yang.

To underclassmen planning to take an unreasonable amount of AP classes, Yang offers a piece of advice: “Don’t do it. Just don’t. You think you can handle it, but you can’t.”

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