With AP tests fast approaching, I’d like to give you underclassmen a piece of advice that I wished someone told me: AP tests don’t matter. At. All.

I’m going to college this fall, and like my fellow seniors, I’ve looked up the AP credit that my college offers. And like my fellow seniors, I was surprised to learn how little my AP exams will help me advance in college.

Here’s what my AP exams get me out of: a semester of reading and composition.

Yes, that’s it. Taking the SAT got me out of more than that.

Even though I’ve taken the AP Environmental Science, AP Biology and AP Chemistry exams, I still have to take physical and biological sciences. Even though I’ve taken the AP U.S. History and AP European History exams, I still have to take historical studies. And even though I’m taking the AP Macroeconomics and AP U.S. Government and Politics exams, I still have to take social and behavioral sciences.

I thought there was some hope when I learned that the political science department at my college allows a student — if he scored a 5 on AP U.S. Government and Politics — to substitute Political Science 1 for an upper-division course. To do this, the student must first declare as a political science major. But I can’t declare as a political science major with my desired subfield unless I take Political Science 1. Catch-22, anyone?

And my school, a UC, has one of the more generous AP credit policies out there. Some universities, such as Dartmouth, don’t offer any AP credit whatsoever. And for its part, Stanford only offers credit for AP Physics if you take AP Physics B or C. The former has been discontinued since 2014. Granted, the worst AP credit schools are the most selective ones, but those are the schools that students who take countless AP exams intend on attending.

“But Varsha,” you say, “don’t all these AP scores count for something on college applications?”

AP exam scores are not, in themselves, a significant factor in college admissions — by comparison, your GPA, your SAT or ACT scores and your AP classes themselves are far more important. The UCs, for example, state explicitly that they will not hold scores below a 3 against students. And I can’t find a single school that requires you to report all your AP scores.

This does make sense. Just as college admissions officers are not going to agonize over the difference between a 2200 and a 2250 on the SAT, they are also not going find any deficits in your erudition if you don’t get a 5.

So, if AP exams don’t help students obtain a decent amount of college credit, and if AP exams don’t even significantly boost students’ college applications prospects, what are we doing this for?

The only answer I can think of is that students taking and passing AP exams makes secondary schools look good, but at what cost? Our students pay hundreds of dollars annually for these tests, our school breaks even at best and the College Board alone profits – and this doesn’t include the untold amount of stress that AP exams place on students in addition to the untold amount of stress that our students already manage.

To be clear, I’m not discounting the value of AP classes — I’m glad that I had access to rigorous coursework while still in high school, and such rigorous coursework does significantly strengthen a student’s college application. But if we’re going to place the burden of AP exams on our schools and our students, then these exams should at least be worth something.

So if you’re an Oak Park student losing sleep over your AP exams, relax. Breathe. If you have been doing well in your AP coursework, you will score well. And know that your clubs, your volunteering and your recommendations – the person that colleges believe you to be, not the brilliant scholar you think you need to be – matter far, far more than these upcoming exams.