High school midterms are too extreme

Around the halfway mark of every semester, the campus is full of upperclassmen, whining endlessly about their midterms. Their complaints are completely justified.

At Saratoga High, a few AP classes, such as AP Chemistry and AP Language and Composition, have midterms, which usually count for a large percentage of grades. One bad midterm could ruin a student’s grade for the rest of the semester. 

The idea behind midterms is to prepare students for college, since most college courses have a midterm. While midterms in college might be fine, midterms in high school are simply not viable. 

For starters, most college courses that have midterms have no homework, so basically the entire grade is determined by a midterm. In other words, college students can manage their time however they want and don’t have to take tests on a regular basis, giving them more time and a flexible schedule. After all,  they are adults who need to be able to organize their activities and time.

However, in high school, classes such as AP Chemistry have midterms in addition to daily homework and occasional unit tests. AP Chem students generally have little time to constantly study for unit tests, do homework and worry about their huge impending midterm. In addition, students must deal with the homework load from other classes as well, leaving them swamped with hours of work on particularly dreadful nights. 

For seniors, midterms fall near the deadline for early decision college applications, and it becomes unmanageable during this time of the year. 

In addition, many colleges offer the option of dropping the class after taking the midterm in case a student did badly. Thanks to this, students will not have to have an F on their transcript in college. 

High school midterms do not offer such flexibility since the drop deadline for AP classes is usually a few weeks before the midterms. As a result, if a high school student does badly on a midterm, he or she can only desperately struggle for the rest of the semester to increase their grade. Otherwise they will have a bad grade that will haunt their transcript. Unfortunately for  seniors, it will be just in time for college admissions.

The idea of preparing students for college through the use of midterms is a decent idea, but the way they are implemented is wrong. If classes seek to have midterms in high school, they should reduce homework and test loads to better emulate college courses and allow for students to study in their chosen way. 

AP Lang is fair in this category since majority of the work is reading and understanding the text, without the worry of unit tests. While it still involves daily work, it is a good example of the direction that other AP classes with midterms should take. 

While it might not be plausible to allow students to drop classes after their midterms, teachers should strive to have midterms weigh less if they continue implementing homework and unit tests or remove the midterms altogether, since they do not provide any clear benefits. The midterms might prepare students for college, but the system comes at a heavy cost to student’s sleep and sanity at this time of the year.