“AP helps hundreds of thousands of high school students achieve their college dreams each year,” reads the College Board’s website. Their Advanced Placement program, which began in 1955, now includes more than 30 courses in six different disciplines. Each year, over one million high school students participate.

The College Board maintains that these courses afford opportunities for students to pursue demanding study comparable to that found in a college setting.

“APs themselves are rigorous courses that challenge you if you are not challenged enough by CP and Honors courses,” junior Everett Jiang said.

Credit for these courses, earned by taking AP exams in May, is accepted at over 2600 universities worldwide.

“The $99 [cost per exam] saves you thousands of dollars in the future in terms of college bills, if you use the APs strategically,” Jiang said.

Yet, the AP appeal lies most saliently in the program’s ability to communicate ambition and effort.

“Even though they’re expensive and the College Board gets profits obviously from APs, they give opportunities to students,” junior Carlo Cruz-Albrecht said.

“You can take AP classes and even if you choose in the end not to take the AP test, you still have the opportunity throughout the year to challenge yourself and learn more, and on your transcript it will show that you took an AP class.”

Recently, the number of AP students has increased rapidly. According to the College Board, the number of exam takers has nearly doubled over the last decade.

This dramatic increase in program participation likely reflects the necessity for students to demonstrate remarkable academic talent in an increasingly competitive college market.

Competition for admittance to universities has been propelled by the rising value of the college degree. The Pew Research Center concluded that college graduates today make on average $17,500 more annually than their peers with only high school diplomas. In a still unstable domestic and global economy, college seems a must to the informed parent or student, and APs seem the ticket to future stability.

However, research indicates that the effects of AP exams extend beyond their role in university admissions. In a 2007 study, the University of Texas, which examined 222,289 university students of all backgrounds in Texas, found “strong evidence of benefits to students who participate in both AP courses and exams in terms of higher GPAs, credit hours earned and four-year graduation rates.”

The study also compared students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds and SAT and ACT scores to demonstrate that those who participated in the AP program were more successful in college.

“I think it prepares students better for the level of academics at college,” counselor Julie Heeney said. “I know students who told me after taking specific classes here, such as AP English, that it really helps them once they get to their college classes where they need to write a lot.”

Moreover, the AP program’s unique characteristics convey unique advantages to the students participating.

“AP classes have the same students in most of the classes so you really build your educational structure around one community, and you start to hang out with people who have the same interests as you and who have the same worth ethic as you,” senior Polina Davydov said.

The program serves both to develop lasting academic adroitness and to foster collaboration and communication. Together, these advantages gift students with valuable and necessary skills.

“It’ll prepare you more for college if you challenge yourself now and if you’ve already taken AP classes you’ll be a step ahead of your peers,” said junior Sophia Gigliotti.

Many students at Oak Park High School take multiple, rigorous AP courses for their advantages – and inflict tremendous amounts of stress upon themselves.

“Everybody reacts to stress differently… some students handle it better than others, and know how to handle it,” Oak Park psychology teacher Jeff Appell said. “But I think, when you get to a certain level of taking five or six APs, you’re at a level where it’s very difficult to handle it well…you are really overloading yourself.”

One stressor for students is the fear that they will not perform well on the AP exams, administered in May.

Junior Jamie Salinger is worried about the volume of material that she must cover for her exams.

“All we do all year comes down to the test,” Salinger said.

The pressure of AP exams also affects student health. According to the American Psychological Association, teenagers sleep far less than the recommended eight to ten hours per night on average, exercise less when they are stressed and sometimes skip meals to avoid breaks in studying.

“I definitely don’t get much sleep overall – I’m more tired, and with the added stress in the month before the actual test,” Salinger said. “It’s overwhelming.”

Sophomore Kali De Varennes is concerned about the high stress displayed by upperclassmen.

“Watching [the upperclassmen] makes me feel stressed…and nervous,” Varennes said. “It makes me think about how hard it’s going to be for me next year at the same time. From watching [them], I see that it takes away… your life.”

Many factors – internal and external – cause students to take such stressful courses.

“We think a lot of that pressure comes from their parents,” counselor Randy McLelland said. “Parents with the best of intentions will put this unreasonable stress on their students… so it puts all this guilt on the child, and they’re literally going to feel like they’re letting everybody down if they don’t take the class or do well on the exam.”

McLelland suggested that classmates are another factor.

“It kind of feeds on itself,” McLelland said. “You’re rubbing shoulders with all these really smart, highly motivated students, and you tend to believe that, well, ‘If [she or he is] doing it, then I need to do it!’”

In response, teachers and counselors advise students to be aware of the workload involved in a class before signing up for it.

“It’s a complete choice to be involved… students have to be aware that when they are taking AP’s, they’re making a choice to jump into that stressful situation,” Appell said.

This May, 443 students will take 1009 AP exams —but these exams are not free.

Oak Park High School charges $99 per exam, leading to hundreds of dollars in fees for students taking several exams.

“I believe that [the prices of] AP exams are reasonable to a certain extent,” senior Russell Tagawa said. “However, I also understand that students like to take multiple AP exams, and after several additions to one AP exam, the price becomes unreasonable.”

While the College Board does offer reduced-price exams for students, the eligibility criteria exclude the vast majority of Oak Park students.

Students must have a family income at or below 185 percent of the poverty level and be eligible for the Federal Free or Reduced-Price Lunch Program to qualify. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 185 percent of poverty level income for a family of four is $44,123.

By contrast, according to 2013 census data, the median income of a family living in Oak Park is $128,218.

Nevertheless, paying for AP exams still represents a significant expenditure for Oak Park families.

“I think [the price] is on the higher side, especially when you are paying for multiple AP tests,” Oak Park parent Seema Chandra said. “And it keeps going up over the last several years since my first child took the tests.”

Despite the cost, some students believe that gaining college credits outweighs the financial toll.

“I think the $99 price of the AP exams is very reasonable considering the possibility of getting college credit for that course,” sophomore Jacob Tennant said.

However, while students may gain college credit, a 2013 report by Stanford University’s Challenge Success program states that saving money through AP credits “tends to be the exception rather than the rule.”

Many colleges set different standards for accepting AP credit, while some colleges, such as Dartmouth, offer no credit whatsoever. Moreover, many students who pass AP exams choose to repeat courses in college that they are eligible to skip.

Administering AP exams also financially burdens the school.

Though Oak Park charges $8 per exam more than the College Board’s suggested price, it does not profit from administering the exams.

“We don’t make any money,” AP Coordinator Shirin Sexton said. “Our best hope is to break even.”

According to Sexton, the school requires a significant amount of money to administer the exams. For instance, the school must pay proctors on a daily basis. The College Board mandates that the number of proctors increase with the number of the students in the testing room.

The school must also pay for students’ water bottles, snacks, pens and pencils, as well as for late orders, late exam returns, late payments and additional answer sheets.

While some are disgruntled with the costs of exams, most agree that the costs are an acceptable burden in order to have an impressive college application.

“I don’t believe $99 dollars is a reasonable cost for one exam — there’s no way it costs that much to hire graders and transport paper,” junior Alexandra Romanova said. “And although the cost of all the exams over the course of three years is a significant amount of money for any family, mine is willing to pay it if it gives me a chance of getting into a competitive school.”