Advantages of taking more AP classes?

sanxie
Thu, 13 May 2010 08:24:53 +0000

So, my school doesn’t offer any AP classes in the humanities, nor do we offer any other tiered options like honors or enriched classes. Instead, we have semester-long elective options that are generally more specific in their subject area. For example, instead of AP European History, we have “European Revolutions”, “Dictatorships and Democracy in Europe”, “Russia from 1917-present”, etc.

The classes are interesting but it’s frustrating because some are much harder than others, yet we receive no weighted credit. They’re also too specific for us to take the AP exam just after the class, so we all have to self-study (and we can’t take these exams at my high school). I have to do a debate next week arguing for bringing more AP humanities classes into my school, because so far we only offer them in languages, math, and science.

I was wondering if anyone could offer any insights, arguments or statistics about the benefit of AP exams? Do you think that our students are at a disadvantage because we don’t have the same AP classes as a lot of other schools?
I’ve been trying to find the average number taken by college-bound seniors and things like that, but I’ve been having trouble.

Any and all help would be much appreciated!