As the year comes to a close, hundreds of anxious faces fill the library, alumni room and Community Center over a two-week period to take Calculus, Spanish, Statistics, Physics and countless other Advanced Placement (AP) tests.
Students may have studied for weeks or chosen to cram the night before each test. But either way the students are stressed — you can see it in their faces, in their walks and in their endless cups of coffee. However, students often put too much weight on the importance of the exams, leading to unnecessary stress.
College Board, the non-profit organization that creates and administers AP tests, charges $103 per test. With such a high price tag, many students may wonder if signing up is even worth it. After all, this will amount to well over $400 for a student taking four AP classes. Despite their cost, AP tests are an excellent experience to have under one’s belt. Students should take these tests as they are simply good preparation for college-level examinations. However, saying they should take them is not to say that they should worry about them.
So, what do AP tests actually count for? Colleges mainly use AP tests to assign credit to students who have shown excellence in a particular subject. For instance, a student can usually skip an introductory American History class in college with a high score — a 4 or 5, as each test is graded on a scale of 1 to 5 — in AP U.S. History. The issue, however, is that not all colleges have such credit placement processes. So, for some students, their high scores mean absolutely nothing, even if they are fives.
It is worth noting that AP tests do not affect a student’s GPA. Even if a student gets a 1 on a test, they might still maintain a perfect 4.0. This makes studying for them instead of studying for actual tests a less-than-great idea since they require an extensive amount of review and practice. While these tests are not easy, focusing on them instead of one’s classes, which for AP students are equally or perhaps more difficult, just does not make any sense. And, realistically, if a student has studied throughout the school year for their classes — and prepared for their in-class final — they should have a sufficient amount of knowledge to do well on the respective tests. Just a simple review and perhaps one or two practice tests should suffice.
It is important to understand why students worry about these tests so much. As with all other academic parts of high school, the answer comes back to college admissions. The Common and University of California applications give students the option to submit their AP test scores. Students may feel that high AP test scores give them a competitive edge over other applicants and aim to do well on their exams for this reason. While it is true that really solid scores can boost an application, as the website Admit Report states, “Almost any admission officer will tell you they care more about your performance in a semester or year-long course than your score from one Tuesday morning AP exam.”
The bottom line is that AP tests are not unimportant, but also not crucial. Each and every AP student should try to do well in their courses throughout the school year, and by the time they take their tests, they will feel they do not need to study that much. And, if their score turns out lower than expected, they do not have to report it to colleges, and they can rest easy knowing that no human eye will ever lay eyes on it. Eventually, AP tests should be a time of low stress, not high.
