The College Board claims that “AP can change your life.” Alex Zhai says, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Is this heresy or just good sense?

ALEX ZHAI
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Saturday, March 10, 2007
Opinions

FRIDAY WAS THE deadline for registering for an Advanced Placement test, and judging by the traffic just outside the Student Services Office, a lot of juniors registered.

Many were only taking the calculus AP, which is required for the class, but some were also taking other subjects. It seemed uncharacteristic for a junior class that never even mentioned “AP” in hallway conversation just a year ago.

For me, it felt a little strange watching all the juniors handing in their registration sheets, check stapled on top. Especially since I didn't have one. Having registered for an AP test in each of my last three years at Uni, I decided not to take an AP this year.

Being an “overachiever” of sorts, I found it wasn't an easy decision to forgo the tests. After all, junior year is supposed to be the most important year that colleges scrutinize — shouldn't I be taking more APs, not fewer?

For a long time the question was not whether to take APs this year, but rather how many and which ones. Looking over the choices, I was confident that, with a little studying, I could get the maximum score of 5 on at least a couple of subjects. But then I asked myself a more important question: Why? Why should I pay $85 just to take a test?

Any student taking an AP is ostensibly trying to place out of college courses, which could save money. For a standard course like calculus, this might make a lot of sense.

However, I decided that it was not a good enough reason. I haven't even applied to college yet — how will I know if the college I attend will even accept AP credit? Colleges tend to have their own (free) placement exams anyway.

The other possible reason for taking an AP test was to force myself to learn the material better. Unfortunately, this too was not a convincing justification. It would be far too tempting to cram in the information, scrape by with a 5, and promptly forget everything except the occasional trivia fact.

As far as I could tell, then, APs could only help in building the résumé. Besides feeling a distinct revulsion when doing anything for the sake of the résumé, I concluded that the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth.

As bait, the College Board offers some awards for scoring well enough on a large enough number of APs.

But there doesn't seem to be a point to collecting them — I'm sure college admissions officers are capable of counting the number of AP tests a particular applicant has taken and reading the scores.

I won't be getting the National AP Scholar of Honorable Merit with Distinction (or whatever it's called) Award this year, but at least I've cut one piece of unnecessary stress out of the last quarter of junior year.

Note: An earlier version of this column appeared in the Gargoyle staff blog.

RELATED

— College Board: Overview of the Advanced Placement Program

— College Board: AP Scholar Awards