The good

“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.