Twenty three. That is the number of AP courses offered by Madison. Varying in content and structure, AP classes are a popular course option for many seniors, juniors, sophomores and occasionally – freshmen. Despite their variances, AP classes share the commonality of being more rigorous than standard or honors classes, with a deeper breadth of content and faster pacing. As of late, however, increasing amounts of underclassmen have begun to take AP classes. This phenomenon not only undermines the original intent of them, but is also an unnecessary risk for students early in high school.
AP classes are introductory college classes. Meaning AP World History, for example, is an introductory college history class – meant to be taken as a college freshman. However, this class has become a standard history option for many sophomores in high school. The course presents immense rigor, covering about 800 years of history. Seeing as the course is intended for college students, such a breadth of content is too much for a sophomore in high school to handle. As a result, a sophomore student who felt AP World was their standard course option may quickly feel overwhelmed by the rigor of the class, which may impede their academic performance – a trend many students report feeling.
“Yeah, I think it’s definitely hard to balance [AP] World with athletics and my social life,” said Casey Ricciardielo (’28), a sophomore student enrolled in AP World History. “It’s just a lot of content.”
Outside of history, an increasing number of underclassmen have begun to take classes such as AP Seminar and AP Human Geography. These classes have been almost normalized for freshmen and sophomores despite their intense workload. For one, AP Seminar requires students to tackle real-world issues, researching and presenting their findings in the form of an original research paper – a task many underclassmen are not ready for in the beginning of high school.
“I was surprised, the minimum word count for our first paper is over 1000, and it is recommended we do more.” Yash Kini (’28) said.
So then, if AP classes are immensely more rigorous, why do underclassmen take them? Recently, FCPS permitted students to take AP Seminar to fulfill their English 10 requirement. As an AP class, AP Seminar grants a higher boost to GPA than English 10 Honors does (a 1.0 boost as opposed to 0.5 boost); As a result, many students flock to take Seminar to raise their GPA, ignoring the fact that the extra boost comes at the cost of difficulty. Additionally, taking AP classes solely for GPA boost can negatively affect the flow in which courses are normally taken in. The content of English 10 Honors, providing an introduction to literary analysis and rhetoric, aligns more heavily with the course students usually take next, AP English Language & Composition. AP Seminar focuses more on research methods and formal writing. Therefore, students who take AP Seminar may be less prepared for AP Lang, an already notoriously difficult class.
Students throw themselves into AP classes to raise their GPA as high as possible as fast as possible – an action done primarily in preparation for college admissions. Taking multiple AP classes has always been standard for admission to selective universities, but in the past couple years, the standard for what is considered “impressive” has shifted drastically. But universities are not the sole culprits. The College Board, now more than ever, has been releasing new AP courses year after year, some of which do not even grant high school credit. Precalculus, which had been an honors class for all of Madison’s history, was split into AP Precalculus AB and AP Precalculus BC this past year despite the fact that most colleges do not accept a credit for this class.
Nonetheless, generalizing this phenomenon as a recommendation to not take AP classes is unfair. Some students may be ready for the rigor offered by AP classes the moment they enter high school, and for them, AP courses are a great early high school option. It is important however, that this is the standout case; AP classes should not be the standard course option for underclassmen.
