Day in and day out students all over taking AP courses are sacrificing their time and effort to keep up with their courses, just for college credit. In the past years AP classes have always been a priority to the students taking them. Day after day of endless sleepless nights we do everything in our power to keep our grades up and to prepare for the AP exam. Considering the lengths students go through all year round to keep up with these Advanced placements courses, making students take an AP test for the college credit seems excessive and unfair. Why do we need to take an exam to prove we know the subject when we’ve been doing that the whole year? 

 There are days where you’re packed with other homework and just general life duties that you must attend. Although the Failing an AP exam does not affect your college applications it doesn’t help you either, meaning you took the class and did the work but didn’t receive the credit, what was the point?. Being a student who has taken AP courses and passed the test feels good, but seeing my friends around me putting in the same and maybe even more effort and not getting the college credit because of one test, after all the sacrifices they made the whole year for the class is truly heartbreaking.

There is no reason to take AP tests that determine whether or not you get the credit if the students have been putting in the work all year. Overall students all over in any AP classes only about 50-60% of the students have passed these tests, which means that the other 50% didn’t pass and did not receive the credit (college board,2020).  AP exams are no guarantee of acceptance to elite colleges.

 “Of the 42,749 applicants to Harvard last year, only 1,962 were accepted—and you can bet all those rejected students took loads of AP courses” (Jane Parent) AP classes are good to take and they do help you up to a certain point, however  only a portion of the the students that were more than likely in AP classes, and passed the test, still didn’t get accepted. Meaning that although the classes do help, they aren’t the main thing that gets you admitted to college, which means that taking AP classes and stressing about the AP test won’t always help you out, because at the end you don’t know if you’ll even earn the credit. Therefore, AP tests are unnecessary. So take a class or two to enrich your learning, but don’t stress!