<p>I don’t object to the existence of AP classes themselves and am glad our high school offers lots of them. My problem is with the way AP’s are used as part of the college admissions game, which puts students in a situation in which they feel they have to take the maximum number of “hard” AP’s, even in subjects that don’t interest them, sometimes precluding them from taking challenging AP’s, and especially from taking non-AP’s, that might interest them more. </p>
<p>My kid had a experience somewhat parallel to what happens at runnersmom’s high school. At all of our college admission sessions, we were told how important it was to take the most challenging courses available, with a tacit agreement that AP’s are the hardest. If the high school offered a lot, the student was expected to take a lot. At our hs, it goes a step further, so that the “hard” AP’s are identified and even if the student is more interested in one of the “easier” AP’s, there is a subtle pressure to forgo it in favor of the tough one. Hence, kids who are more interested in environmental science are nevertheless taking AP physics and APUSH trumps economics, irrespective of the interests of the student. Classes that don’t have an AP designation, such as Shakespeare and geology and genetics are seen as not cutting it, so good students who want top universities end up with a kind of generic “hard” AP everything schedule. It just seems to be such a waste for a child with no interest in physics whatsoever to be slogging through it AP when there is another challenging non-AP that the student would prefer, all because, realistically, in a school that offers a ton of AP’s, kids with wall to wall “hard” AP’s have better college admission opportunities.</p>