Peer pressure leads students to take APUSH

We all know that Saratoga often fosters an extremely competitive academic atmosphere, with students pointlessly comparing each other’s GPAs as they vie for academic honors to increase their chances of getting into a prestigious college.

As a result, many students try to load up on a myriad of AP courses to gain the coveted grade point boost, even if they don’t like the classes they are taking. This practice is most obvious with the AP U.S. History (APUSH) course.

It seems to me that most students taking APUSH don’t actually enjoy the subject. In my APUSH class, it’s pretty obvious that a lot of the people aren’t interested in the subject material. Rather, I think that these students chose the class because of the grade point boost.

A lot of people complain that APUSH is an endless cycle of notes, lectures and readings. If you don’t like learning about U.S. history, of course you’re not going to like it. Even if you love learning about U.S. history, taking these piles of notes isn’t be one of the most dynamic and mind-blowingly exciting things you’ve ever done, but in the process, you will learn a lot in a subject area that you enjoy.

APUSH is a prime example of students attempting to grab a grade-point boost because people hold misconceptions about history classes. In freshman and sophomore year, students take World Geography and World History, two relatively easy history courses. These classes are light in homework load and cause students to believe that the school’s history classes are rather easy.

Then comes time to sign up for junior year classes, and students choose APUSH because it’s an AP class and there’s a grade boost. Not only that, they think it’s an easy AP because their previous history classes weren’t terribly difficult. When they take the class, however, they realize that the workload was much more than they were expecting.

Another problem compounding this issue is students’ reluctance to drop overwhelming courses early on. Students are afraid that dropping out of a heavy-load AP course will negatively affect their image. (Most of the people won’t mind that you dropped, because they will be inundated with work from the course and won’t take the time to ponder about why you dropped the class.)

I don’t really blame people who take APUSH just for the extra grade point. I understand that there are many external pressures: parents, siblings, friends, just to name a few, who are pushing for students to take those AP classes.

The fiercely competitive struggle for college admissions is not helping either. This competition to gain entrance into a prestigious college has pushed students to cheat on standardized tests, violate policies of academic integrity and ruin friendships. In comparison to these moral violations, taking an AP course in a subject you don’t like doesn’t look so bad.

It’s difficult to prevent students from taking AP courses for purely grade-boosting motives. Getting into college has become a sort of competition where students will put themselves under extreme stress to maintain impeccable grades.

People can be hopelessly idealistic and believe that people should only take classes for their love of the class, but that is a quixotic belief. People are always going to take APUSH for the extra grade point, whether they like the class or not.