The average American high schooler goes through a lot in a day. Friendship drama, lunch table gossip, and now a bunch of American teenagers have to worry about passing all of their AP exams come the spring. When the AP program was first introduced in 1955, course options were limited and rigorous. This has since changed, and in the 2025-2026 school year, 40 AP subjects are offered nationwide.
With the influx of Advanced Placement classes, Grade Point Averages have become saturated and therefore less valuable, meaning students must take two, three, or even four APs in hopes of standing out among a pile of college applications. This makes the AP courses themselves less impressive, according to Summit Educational Group in their article AP Overload: Balancing Academic Rigor & Student Well-Being. If AP courses aren’t impressive, that leads students to the question of what is impressive enough to get them into college?
As AP courses become more commercialized and accessible, some schools have shifted away from offering them entirely. In 2018, a group of eight private high schools in Washington, D.C, abandoned the Advanced Placement courses because the courses did not foster the schools’ preferred method of thought for their students. In their abandonment of the program, all eight schools found the alternatives to AP’s more beneficial to students and did not damage their chances of being accepted to a prestigious university. Furthermore, the schools still host AP testing in the spring and found that their students, on average, passed regardless of the absence of the specific AP curriculum under their belts.
That’s a great alternative for those with such lengthy resources, but what about for an average American high school? Most public high schools don’t have experts in every department to teach their children, so can AP classes still be a good option? The necessity of AP classes stems from college applications and demonstrating academic excellence, and to that point, AP classes can and have been beneficial to those who take them with caution.
An interview with Mr. Tomasheski, an AP history teacher, explored the benefits of AP classes in an average American high school. When asked about the necessity of AP classes, Mr. T agreed that they have become increasingly relevant to gaining college admission. He further discussed the significance of AP classes for college applications, stating, “Students need AP classes to even be considered today.” This statement holds a lot of bearing for most of his students who are trying to get into top schools. It brings up the question of why we, as a society, do this to ourselves.
Though AP classes are sometimes questioned for their benefits, there is something to be said about the difference in the environment of an AP class versus that of an A-level course. In an environment where everyone strives to achieve a certain level of academic rigor, a more focused energy is palpable among all participants, including teachers. Mr. T said, “The students are much more dedicated.” In reference to his AP history classes. Considering these for dedicated students are devoted to the subjects their studying, do they have to be cornered into exams and tests to prove their worth?
The College Board, the organization responsible for administering AP tests, is technically a nonprofit organization; however, it charges $99 per test per student. When you think of a non-profit organization, you don’t think of membership fees and added-on charges. That’s a business, and with the College Board’s dominance of the industry, one may say it’s a monopoly. If the exam scores aren’t always taken, and there is no real proof of better adaptation to college in a student who takes AP classes, how beneficial are they to a high schooler, and why do we prioritize AP classes the way we do?
