Advanced Placement (AP) is a program of college level courses offered at many high schools. This program is designed to help high school students earn college credits at the high school, rather than on a college campus. Fortunately, AP harms students more than it helps which is a good ground for having the program banned from the education system. This program provides students with rigorous classwork, homework, and tests in order to prepare them for the college road ahead. How successful students end up being in AP classes should determine how well they will do in college. AP is advertised as “free college”, which sounds pretty good right? You get to save money, earn some college credits, and enjoy the high school experience; however, this is not always the case. What is failed to be conveyed when recruiting students for AP classes is that there might be a chance that a college credit is …show more content…
The benefits that can be found are, saving money on tuition, graduating sooner, being able to impress college admissions officers, and many more benefits to these goal-oriented students (Shaffer, 2014). The people who tend to believe this do not know the negative effects this program has on the students, physically and emotionally. At Forest High School in Ocala, Florida, a handful of AP students where asked how many hours they spend on homework a night, and the answers ranged from three to four plus hours. According to Jorge Barrientos, three and a half hours of homework a night is too much for a high school student to handle and will lead to increased stress levels, poor physical and mental health (Barrientos, 2010). There are many other stressors that the AP program can invoke in students, causing them failure that could have been avoided by just not having the AP program in
In the essay AP courses-Mounting Burden, Declining Benefit, the author Nathan Yan expresses his concern about the impact of AP classes have on students. He states that most of students who takes AP courses have an infatuation of passing the AP tests. Yan explains that with this kind of obsession, students are giving up their education, desire to learn and their understanding of the subject for a 3, 4, or 5 test score on the AP test. The writer was wondering that by giving up all these important characteristics of taking a class, a passing score on the AP test really mean anything much, let alone exemplify the readiness for college by AP students. Furthermore, he argues that by creating and teaching AP courses, teachers and administrators are
Recently the guidance department of Boston Latin School has instituted a new policy that limits the number of Advanced Placement classes students can enroll in during junior year. Previously students after being granted a waiver could take a maximum of four AP classes. However under the new guidelines all juniors are restricted to three. This is unfair to students who seek to reach their full academic potential.
High school students everywhere in the United States make very selective class choices based on careers they may want to pursue in the future. One decision that the students may make is to take an AP class. Among students, when they hear the name AP they automatically think stress, and homework, and tests; however it also means college credit, and advanced placement and promises a future. What if the College Board changed the benefits and decided that if the school board had a problem with the crew framework and felt the need to change it, then this AP class wouldn't be worth anything in college? The promises of college credit and advanced classes would be ripped from the students' hands, and the choices they made in order to take this
I offer an immense amount of academic strengths and skills to the Advanced Placement program. To begin with, I excel in science, English, geography/ history and visual arts. My primary interests are in marine biology and the life sciences. However, I use my incredible work ethic to help guide me to success. Science is definitely my strongest subject, but I have the determination to improve in other areas I am not comfortable with. Being surrounded by competition regularly motivates me to work hard and put in quality effort that meets my expectations. I use my
Today’s Mississippi high school students are severely under prepared for the transition to college. A high percentage of students entering their freshman year of college discover that they have complications in transitioning to both college life and college courses. Many students go on to have issues finishing college with the graduation rate of Mississippi colleges being “fifty percent” (The Alliance for Excellent 1).These complications are due to there being only a handful of classes that can help prepare someone for college and even then these classes are optional, which results in many students not electing to take them. To ensure Mississippi high school students are ready for college a mandatory college prep course would be required to
In Barnett and Hughes’ (2010) article that focuses on the “three important milestones” that lead to college completion, the authors dissect the best practices used across the country by colleges and high schools to get their students on the track to success in college. They found that dual enrollment of classes, which occurs when high school students are allowed to take college courses at the same time, and earn college credit upon completion, addresses the three main milestones identified. Dual enrollment also adds value for students and assists in helping students become acclimated to college. Although some states have restrictions on who can take dual enrollment, (ex. Must have a 3.0 GPA) the focus seems to be shifting away from those restrictions to target the populations that may not have been interested in post-secondary education (Barnett and Hughes, 2010).
College readiness is the main focus point for high school students. Becoming that person that is able to achieve the highest potential in a certain area and obtain a degree is what each student aims for. However, for all that to occur one should be able to have the opportunities to help him or her reach the goals that have been set. The lack of AP classes that our school does not offer interferes with that. Our school offers eleven out of the forty AP classes that are available. In addition, some of the AP classes do not end up running because of the school policy of having a certain amount of students placed in it. The importance of AP classes is increasing when one fills out an application for his or her desired university. Having AP classes listed down on an application for a university enhances a student 's application. Colleges want to see that you have challenged yourself to the best of your ability, and that you were able to handle the college level coursework (hubpages).
...e clearly pressured many different ways to take these advanced placement courses. Although most schools have a system in place in which a student needs a teacher’s recommendation to take the class, the teacher may be giving a student who is not ready for the course permission for other reasons. Students should be recommended to take courses in which they feel challenged but not overwhelmed. Advanced placement courses are becoming more and more the norm in high schools eve if the students who take them are not necessarily ready for that level of class. It is important that we keep students feeling encouraged to take courses that challenge them but not courses that they are pressured into taking. Parents, teachers, and peers are all pressures in this topic but everyone needs to make sure that the most important aspect of school is the education the student is getting.
This year I am a junior at Bartlett High School. In order to achieve my diploma at graduation my senior year, I am required to take a course called Civics and Econ. It is not just me who is required to take this course - it is mandatory for all students at Bartlett High. Civics and Econ does not sound too bad, but from a student's perspective it does. My interest, especially for my future college major, lies in the health science classes. I initially asked my counselor to take AP Psychology instead of Civics and Econ; unfortunately, my request was denied. It irritated me that I was not able to take a class that I was interested in, but was forced to take a class I did not care about. I was not able to further my interest in the field of psychology
One recurrent theme in these students’ comments is a sense that the deck is stacked against them. They see a prestigious college as the only gateway to a good life, and they believe they need stellar transcripts and mile-long lists
In a multitude of high schools across the nation, an increasing number of students are deciding to enroll in AP classes, of which a large percentage are quite unsuited for the upper level class they are about to take. These advanced placement classes are meant to stimulate the brightest children of the school population, as well as for students to prove themselves as deserving of sought-after college credit. However, perhaps due to parental and peer pressure, those who clearly do not have the intelligence or motivation necessary to take these classes end up enrolling in these courses. The original intent of making these advanced classes open access was to enable minorities, who are bogged down even today by racial stigmas
The College Board created advanced placement, aka AP, courses in 1952 to close the learning gap between high school and college. (Tierney, John) They initially began with only eleven courses, but have matured to around thirty-four different courses. The courses were created by a committee of college professors, high school teachers and College Board members to ensure that the material was rigorous and difficult as a college class. The increased difficulty and rigor of the course would grant the student a college credit if they passed the exam. In the early years, the courses were available to the advanced students of large high schools; as time has passed,
Why is that some people slide through school taking shop, home economics, and gym classes? Probably because those classes boost their grade point average, GPA, and make them look more attractive to colleges. But, why should people taking harder classes like AP classes, physics, Spanish, calculus have to suffer from a lower GPA and class rank? Shouldn’t they be rewarded for their hard work? The question is “how would you change it”, and the answer is with weighted classes/GPA’s. Not many people know what weighted classes are. Luckily Lindsay (2015) spelled it out for those who don’t know what it is, “A weighted GPA is a GPA that takes the difficulty of your classes into account along with your grades” (para. 2). When schools use un-weighted classes it doesn’t always tell the whole story of how hard a student worked to receive their grades in high school. Those taking those harder classes, and still getting good grades, they should benefit from getting good grades in harder classes. High schools need to have weighted classes in order to demonstrate
In order to take AP Government and Politics as a sophomore at my high school, I had to get above a 95% in freshman history, Cultures and Civilizations, and at least a 93% in our difficult English curriculum. I ended the first semester with a 99% in Cultures and Civilizations and 92.5% in English—a mere half percent too low. Upon receiving my course information as an incoming freshman, I planned out all of my classes, and AP Gov fit flawlessly into the path that I wanted and thought that I had to take. I talked to my English teacher, who agreed to recommend me into the class like my counselor told me to ask her to do, but my history teacher and the social studies department were adamant: I could not take AP Gov as a sophomore with a B+ in
The process of obtaining a college degree is not an easy task, it requires a large amount of time invested. In order to graduate, colleges and universities require a certain amount of credits. These credits achieved by taking courses referred to as general education classes. Colleges set these courses to enable the students to “Explore, Discover, and Transform.” The general education courses prepare students to acquire knowledge and skills to become well educated people, that are then ready to interact with the outside world in a responsible manner (“Degrees: General”). The general education courses include English, History, Science, and Mathematics. In order to receive credit for the specific section students are required to take one or two classes that fall under each section. In addition, specific majors require