Every LASA student is required to take at least 8 AP classes by the end of high school. When factoring in languages and the math requirement for every year, that value tends to rise to nine or ten. Students are not required to take the exams, of course, but given they’ll already be preparing for them the whole year —and given that they’ll be exempt from one of their finals if they do — almost all end up doing so anyway. The consequence is that upwards of $800 goes into the pockets of the College Board for every single one of the about 400 students present in any LASA yearly class, totaling to $320,000 per graduating class after their four years. Could that money not be used more effectively? Could it be that LASA’s endless pursuit of AP courses is actually doing more harm than good?

A large question that many Advanced Placement (AP) students have is what that money is going towards.  On the surface, it seems to allow students to receive college credits or improve their probability of acceptance into colleges, which taking and passing the exams does affect. But a lot of U.S. colleges don’t take AP exams for full credit or placement, especially a lot of more prestigious colleges. Foreign colleges are even more stringent: Oxford, for example, requires three or four 5s in subjects related to your major. On top of the increasing pass rates of AP exams — some have upwards of 80% getting a 3 or above, as reported by the College Board — it’s pretty clear that each one of them doesn’t hold as much weight as it seems, especially for AP classes in fields that students aren’t even interested in or planning to go to college for. 

In reality, that money mostly serves to coat the College Board’s already immense profits. Despite being nominally a nonprofit, they still have over a billion and a half dollars in revenue, mostly caught up in various investments. The cost of AP exams has been ever increasing, too; 20 years ago, it was almost 20 dollars lower as tracked by TotalRegistration. 

Especially in the humanities, the tests don’t even provide the testing of thought they say they do. They mostly gauge ability to follow rubrics and write formulaic essays in short amounts of time. For more complex, multifaceted topics such as history or English, it’s simply not possible to accurately showcase a deep grasp of them within such a short time. And this is a big shame, because the actual things being taught in those classes are interesting and useful. But they still fall to the wayside when placed under the heel of the AP Exam.

So we are currently beholden to an expensive, stressful, and not even all that useful system. This should not continue, and from what I’ve heard throughout my time at the school, not many students want it to. 

A solution to this problem wouldn’t come easily. Having both AP English Language and AP English Literature required is not very necessary, given that a lot of colleges don’t even accept two AP English credits, making them merely serve as an additional stressor in the two hardest years of high school. The ability to take a choice of English classes — perhaps a situation with a couple of different English IVs, focusing on different types of literature, alongside the district requirements — could be a lot less stressful and more interesting. Social Studies can go a similar way. There are a wealth of year-long and semester-long electives that often don’t even make the cut because students don’t have a chance to do them.

Meanwhile, this would result in added slots in testing rooms due to students not having to take some of the APs they don’t want to take. This means that more students can have the opportunity to self-study for tests that either they don’t have room for in their schedule, already have the required knowledge for from previous classes, or that LASA doesn’t even offer. LASA doesn’t allow students that aren’t seniors to take AP exams that they’re not in a class for right now. For many students setting their sights on higher-echelon or foreign colleges, having these exams done before their senior year is a near-necessity.

LASA is known for its intense rigor when it comes to academics. But pure difficulty doesn’t always equal rigor, and AP classes often are difficult in ways divorced from the difficulty of the actual content. LASA does a great job with its non-AP college-level class. Two of my favorite subjects this year are Organic Chemistry and Linear Algebra, and despite being a lot less stressful than, say, English III or U.S. History, I feel that I’ve learned a lot more from them.There are other ways to get college credit that aren’t just APs, also, such as dual-credit or ACC courses. LASA already does some integration of these into its courses, such as through the Biotechnology internship and the ACC U.S. History, Government, and Economics courses. Incorporating this into more subjects is purely a matter of expanding an existing system. 

The state of education in the U.S. is currently quite rocky. Even if the College Board won’t change to fit the times, perhaps we still can. LASA prides itself on being a place where bright students can succeed and excel in the disciplines of their own choosing. But holding on to structures that only increase stress and cost while better options for helping students are out there isn’t the way to do so.