When course registration comes around, students often stack their schedules to the brim with Advanced Placement (AP) courses. With this practice being normalized, freshman, who would typically only take regular or honors classes, are pushing themselves to take up to three APs. Even worse, many juniors are caught flooding their entire school day with AP classes back to back. Most of these students end up struggling to handle the overwhelmingly difficult courseload.
This trend of increased AP enrollment is not something McLean should actively encourage when considering the damage to students’ well-being and education. To put a damper on students’ ability to aimlessly select courses for the sake of its “AP” label, the school should enforce more prerequisites for AP classes. Students should be mandated to take at least one regular or honors class that’s related to the AP class they want to register for, depending on the predicted difficulty of the AP course. That way, students can take courses that match their current knowledge level.
Students who already have adequate knowledge of the AP subject should be assessed on their knowledge so that they can directly enroll in the course, instead of taking a regular or honors class.
Oftentimes, students check off as many AP courses to take as they can, with their eyes fixed on the GPA boost and the perceived rigor that comes with AP classes. However, by doing this, students ignore the immense stress that is associated with an advanced courseload.
AP classes are designed to teach college-level content, and many teachers employ a teaching style that aligns with that of college professors. Thus, the majority of the course relies on students’ independence and proactiveness—in other words, self-teaching.
The independent nature of these courses means significantly more classwork and homework that is more time-consuming than normal courses. Coupled with students’ extracurriculars, taking several AP classes is extremely demanding.
By taking on a schedule of mostly AP courses, many students also don’t think about the actual content of those courses.
With a lack of interest, students are only going through the motions to maintain a decent grade without retaining any information. Ultimately, mass-registering for AP classes only undermines students’ learning.
Some may argue that having students sign up for more AP classes is a sign of striving for increased intellectual curiosity, and may allow more students to experience higher-level education. But the goal is no longer about education when students solely use AP courses to dress up their college application.
As maxing out APs becomes the standard, it pressures other students to follow suit, creating a negative feedback loop. Requiring prerequisites can slow down AP class registration and reinstate the value of learning. If McLean added prerequisites, AP classes could return to being opportunities for students to gain advanced knowledge based on their own interests.
