How students perceive the difficulty of Advanced Placement (AP) classes can cause uncertainty in students’ capabilities of taking a college level course. However, the reality of AP classes is much different for the students who are currently taking them.
When considering AP classes, the decision can depend on how much time a student is willing to put into a college level course.
“If you’re someone who doesn’t study and who doesn’t like to do homework outside of school, then AP classes probably aren’t for you,” junior Lana Luke said. “If you’re willing to put in a little bit of time, it’s going to be different and new information, but it’s not going to be impossible.”
According to Luke, students should be aware of what’s going on, pay attention in classes, and take notes whenever needed.
“The more to-do lists you can make, the better you’ll be able to focus” Luke said. “Make sure you’re prioritizing assignments, [like] which ones are due tomorrow versus which ones are due next week.”
Students interested in taking Advanced Placement Language and Composition (AP Lang) should expect at least 20 to 40 minutes of homework per night.
“AP Lang is about 100% non fiction reading, so they’re easier to understand,” AP Lang teacher Anthony DeRubis said. “They can be more contemporary, but we spend our time dissecting why the author said [it], not necessarily what the author said. It’s obvious what the author said a lot of times in AP Lang, but we spend our time figuring out why they say it that way. Was it the persuasive effect, and did it have the maximum effect on the audience that they intended?”
AP Lang is different from any other English class. In Honors English, students are used to reading difficult texts.
“The pieces in AP Lang are very accessible,” DeRubis said. “It will certainly make you a better, more polished writer. If you’re looking to go to college and you want to get a head start on being able to write critically for speed, but also for clarity and for thoroughness, I would push any Honors student that wants to put in the time and effort to take AP Lang.”
Advanced Placement Physics is an applied mathematics course, so students should expect a significant amount of math along with the science.
“[It has] a lot of math that explains how the world works, which is both challenging and also very interesting and rewarding,” AP Physics teacher Samantha Knepp said. “It’s interesting to see how math predicts everything about the world, and if students are interested in that, then they’ll do just fine with it.”
AP Physics is essentially Honors Physics in terms of its content, but it’s more in depth and details.
“AP Physics adds in an additional level of difficulty by giving word problems that are symbolic rather than using actual numbers,” Knepp said. “It uses algebra much more than what Honors Physics does, so making sure that your algebra skills are good is going to be very important.”
According to Advanced Placement European History teacher Eric Zolnak, AP Euro is considered a college survey class, so students should expect a ton of material to complete. This includes a lot of writing, reading and questioning by the teacher with the intent to help students see the connections of history.
“You’re expected to essentially understand the history of Europe from 1300 to the present,” Zolnak said. “Understanding all political, social, economic, and cultural trends that occur, not to mention changes to the physical nature of the countries as they develop.”
According to Zolnak, AP Euro goes at a faster pace than Honors World as the Honors class takes more time to cover the ancient civilizations. It’s a larger scope of time, but it doesn’t dive as deep into the topics like AP Euro does.
“I put the assignments for the week out by 1p.m. on Sunday so students can self-pace themselves,” Zolnak said. “I try in both classes not to give anything spur of the moment. That doesn’t mean that never happens, but it’s rare. Both classes [AP Euro and Honors World History] rely on you to read, write and analyze. The pace of [AP] Euro is going to be faster because we have a deadline, and the deadline is the AP National Exam in the first or second week of May every year.”
