By Dylan Sawhney
From May 4th to May 15th, high school students across the country took AP exams. AP or “Advanced Placement” classes are college level classes, often 101, that students can take to potentially, based on their AP exam score, receive a college credit.
Josh Greenbarg, a senior at IHS said “I think AP exams are helpful in that they can provide college credits, but I don’t think they should be required to get into a good school since they are very expensive.”
Irvington offered two new AP classes this year: AP Physics, and AP Seminar. Seminar students prepared early, as they had to submit two essays, and two presentations to the college board as a part of their AP scores.
AP Seminar student Dahlia Anenberg, junior, said, “I think the class has really improved both my writing and presentational skills. I highly recommend it.”
Often considered some of the easiest AP’s, AP Psych, AP World, and AP Environmental Science, are all vocabulary heavy APs. They often rely on memorization rather than achieving a true understanding of the material.
Paul Van Haetsdaele, a sophomore at IHS said “I like AP exams, because they are an opportunity for us to show what we learned. Also, they are close to the end of the year, and once they are all done it takes a lot of stress off myself.”
When asked about AP Lang, junior Zoya Bhandari said, “I feel like I’ve learned about a lot of different rhetorical choices a person can make and it’s really helped improve my writing over the years.”
Ultimately, AP’s are a good sneak peek into college-level course rigor and can be valuable experiences.
