Advanced Placement classes and exams play an important role in college applications, as they display a student’s willingness to challenge themselves, readiness for college-level work and mastery of a subject. If done well enough, AP exams may even act as a college credit, which can help students save money and potentially graduate early.
Currently, Germantown Academy offers a total of 10 AP classes, an amount significantly fewer than the number of APs offered by most public schools. While it is still possible to sign up for AP exams without taking the course, GA tends to hesitate from recommending students to do so, with worries of overwhelming and burning out students. However, due to the numerous benefits AP exams can have on your college application, many students still take exams for subjects GA doesn’t offer at the advanced placement level.
“GA didn’t offer any of the AP classes to freshmen, and a lot of my friends who attend public schools were taking AP [exams] along with the classes,” Sophia Song ‘27 said. She took the AP World History and AP Chinese exam to explore career options and deepen interests, explaining, “As a freshman, I was already seeking to attend a top [program in] college and to go down that path. So in order to do that, I thought that I had to take some sort of AP exam freshman year just to match what public school had.”
One reason why GA decides to limit their AP classes is for flexibility in their program. To count as an AP course, they must follow the course guidelines as chosen by College Board.
“There’s a sense that the teachers could have more flexibility in preparing students for college in what they teach, and have more control and ability in the curriculum, instead of having to follow the format that College Board gives,” Associate Director of College Counseling Mr. Jonathan Na said.
The main rationale behind not promoting the AP exams is the worry of overwhelming students with too much extra work. However, because of the benefits, many students take the exams anyway. Adapting existing courses to the AP level could ease this extra burden by integrating the material into the school day, therefore reducing the need for students to spend extra time teaching themselves new topics.
In many of the exams, the test structure and scoring is notably different than GA’s. If certain courses offered at GA were adapted to AP standards, students could be more experienced with the testing format and won’t have to struggle with adjusting.
“I 100 percent think [I would’ve benefited]. The AP exam is very different from a traditional GA honors course, in the sense that the AP tests you on different skills,” Song said.
“In the FRQs (Free Response Questions), they are looking for specific kinds of answers, specific styles and ways of answering questions. So of course, learning how to do that in class would be better,” Rushil Reddy ‘27 said.
Additionally, material on the AP exams sometimes differs from the GA courses. As a result, students frequently have to spend extra time learning these unfamiliar topics.
“For [the] AP World History [exam] that I did this year, there was similar overlap, but I still had to learn a lot,” Reddy said.
For a student, being taught this material in school has many advantages. They receive the benefit of learning from an experienced professional, and moreover, they avoid having to spend time teaching themselves extra materials on top of existing classwork.
That being said, certain courses already being offered at GA have a lot of overlapping material with the AP exams, such as Honors Physics, Honors World History and Honors Statistics. Adapting these courses would not require significant change, and would maintain the integrity of the course, while still helping students taking the AP exam prepare more thoroughly.
“For science classes especially- because either way, you’re learning the same information- I don’t think it’d be too much of a change, and it would help the students get college credit,” Reddy said.
Ultimately, switching appropriate classes such as honors physics, honors statistics and honors history, where the significant majority of the material is overlapping, stands to benefit students. Not only will it help them better prepare for the exam, but students will also gain the advantage of learning from an experienced teacher and avoid having to deal with the stress of self-study.