Should I take the AP test?

SolaCatella
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:27:47 +0000

I’m in a bit of a sticky situation at my school at the moment. During the summer of this school year, my beloved Latin teacher unexpectedly lost his job (due to problems with the educational part of his degree–he had procrastinated on getting that bit done until the last year possible and had a teacher fail him apparently because she didn’t like his teaching style despite the fact that essentially the entire student body loved him as a teacher and that he had been awarded Teacher of the Year the previous year).

The new Latin teacher was not AP-certified, so the ten of us who had been planning to take AP Latin Vergil for level IV were left with schedule holes which we were notified of all of ten days before the first day of school. Rather than shunt myself into Weight Lifting, the only open class for that time period, I used a TAG option at my school to create a Directed Study of AP Latin Vergil. A friend who had been in my class last year also chose to do this option. Luckily, we had the same period open, so we have been working together on this directed study all year–working on our translational skills, practicing multiple choice questions and free-response questions released from previous exams, etc. We had planned to take the AP exam come spring.

When we went to sign up, however, we ran into a dilemma: our school will not pay for the AP exam in our case. It seems that it has a policy that it will only pay for AP exams if the student is overseen by a teacher who is “qualified” to teach AP in that subject. So they’ll pay for the AP Psychology exam for the course I’m taking online through our state Virtual High School, but not the AP Latin Vergil exam. At $80, the exams aren’t cheap!

My friend, who is a high school freshman (very very unusual at my school; she came from an International School and was taught Latin and French starting much earlier than most students at my school), is planning to take the AP exam anyway–she says it can’t hurt to have AP credits under her belt as a freshman! I’m not so sure that it’s the best thing I can do, however. I am taking five other AP classes this semester and have taken four previously. I have three scores of five (Chemistry, World History, and US History) and one score of four (English Language) to my credit at the moment. Most of the schools I have applied to have credit caps, so I’m not worried about the possible loss of credit. My mother has offered to pay for the test if I really want to take it, but agrees with me that it’s probably too expensive to pay for if I’m not going to get credit for it.

However, when I self-reported my senior year course schedule when applying to colleges, I reported as “Directed Study (AP Latin Vergil).” I am worried at the implications if I don’t take the test. What should I do? Advice?