The AP Myth

I remember a chat I had with a friend’s father. Being two Asians, we were talking about college, of course, and he told me earnestly that he thought AP courses shouldn’t exist because high school teachers are unqualified to teach college-level material. An instinctive denial arose in my mind, because at that time I had already spent hundreds of dollars registering and dozens of hours studying on eight AP exams. However, I sat down and thought about it a while afterwards, and realized that I completely agreed with him. Hear me out.

AP, IB (International Baccalaureate), and other similar programs in other countries aim to give high school students college-level classes and material to “ease” them into the college system, give them college experience and credits. In order to do so, said student takes a preparatory class at his/her high school, takes the annual standardized exam at the end of the year and gets a score that shows his/her proficiency in the subject compared to the average in the mail in July. Then, these scores are sent to colleges so that they can count credits and/or place the student out of an introductory level course. This system is broken, and here’s why.

By the end of my senior year, I will have accumulated 13 AP classes and 12 AP exam scores. How many of these will give me credit? Exactly 0. How many will place me out of a college course? I’m unsure. What sort of college experience did I get from taking a class taught by a high school teacher with other high school students? Zero.

Let’s begin with the credit lie. An AP exam costs $80-$95. A college course in the United States costs thousands of dollars. I would probably have fulfilled at least half of the graduation credit requirements at any of the colleges I applied to, meaning that I could technically graduate in two years and pay half the tuition, half the housing, half the meal. Even someone with, say, 4 AP exams can get a big chunk of their credit requirements out of the way. You know where this is going. Especially in these hard times, colleges depend on their students to keep the money flowing. How can they afford to issue the same number of degrees while getting less tuition money? Many, if not all, top colleges in the United States have refused to give credit for any AP classes or scores.

Instead, what these colleges can do is place you in a higher class based on your performance on the AP exam. Since not all colleges can or will do this, however, the process becomes befuddling. How are you supposed to know that the AP Art History you took in sophomore year wasn’t going to place you out of anything at the engineering school you’ve chosen two years down the line? The deadline for AP registration this year was March 29, three days before most college decisions. I signed up for four APs before realizing that they were largely going to be useless at the institution I will most likely choose. What if you get placed in a higher class in which you struggle because you forgot the material or were just never taught properly?

Colleges are expensive because they have the best teachers in the world to teach you. There’s a wide skill (and pay) difference between a high school teacher and a college professor. How can a high school teacher match the performance, resources and flexibility offered by a college class? As hard as they try, they cannot replicate the college depth or experience. They are not paid or educated to teach at that level. Instead, most AP classes are simply review courses for the May AP exam; they study for an exam rather than the material.

What the AP does accomplish is unclear. Arguably, AP material can provide additional challenge to competent students and expose them to legitimate college material. They also may give colleges an additional reference point to the student’s ability in a specific field. However, these perks vary from school to school and from subject to subject. I’ve also never been asked to send official AP scores to any college, although SAT scores have been demanded several times.

Ultimately, the APs are a set of seemingly arbitrary standardized questions that vary very little each year. They have become a new symbol of competition between high schoolers, one that costs more and more each year. It’s the undesired middleman between high school and college. Kids are penalized because their schools do not offer these “competitive” classes. When ETS splits Macroeconomics and Microeconomics, Physics, Calculus and GovPol, makes the students’ families pay for each separately and cancels the French Literature exam because too few people are taking it, I can’t help but think that they’re in it just for the money. APs are putting unnecessary pressure on school systems, teachers and colleges and providing little concrete return on the investment.

For posterity, please eliminate AP examinations from the high school system.