Endless document-based questions, review videos and standardized tests will pay off, right? 

This is the question many high school students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) classes grapple with as they prepare for the competitive college admission process.

For some, AP classes pay off in more ways than one, allowing high schoolers the potential to earn college credit if they pass the cumulative exam, according to The College Board, which runs AP. 

However, Aaron Hanlon, an English professor at Colby College in Maine, believes there may be academic costs associated with AP’s focus on testing.

“When you teach to a test, you have to reduce the material in some way,” Hanlon said. 

In other words, Hanlon thinks high schoolers who take AP classes are taught how to pass the end of the year cumulative exam, not learn functional skills. 

DePaul sophomore Kate Shuert agreed the seven AP classes she took in high school taught her how to master a timed test, not excel in college.

“My AP English classes didn’t teach me how to write a better essay,” said Shuert, who went to high school in the Chicago suburbs before attending DePaul. “They taught me how to write an essay quickly. That’s not helpful or transferable to what I’m doing now.” 

Shuert said it is frustrating that students can do well in an AP class but still not get college credit because of poor test results. 

“You spend all this time prepping for a test, and you could get an A in the class, but get a ‘2’ on this all-important exam, and it was all for nothing,” Shuert said. “It’s so unfair.”

There are 39 AP courses ranging, from AP Statistics to AP World History. The College Board reported that 34.6% of public high school graduates from the class of 2022 took at least one AP test, while 21.6% of the same demographic scored a “3” or higher on at least one AP test. The cumulative AP tests are graded on a scale from “1” to “5,” “1” being the lowest and “5” being the highest. 

Hanlon said classes that grant students college credit without cumulative tests, such as dual enrollment programs, are alternatives that might bring more curriculum freedom and less stress.

On the other hand, Vince Walsh-Rock, a DePaul professor in the counseling and special education department, said there is research suggesting that just taking AP courses — not necessarily scoring well on the tests — predicts college success. 

According to a University of Texas at Austin study of 222,289 Texas college students, those who did not pass their AP exams in high school still outperformed those who did not take AP classes. 

Nevertheless, Walsh-Rock — who previously worked as the AP coordinator at a high school and has taught AP Music Theory — said this comes as little comfort to students who miss out on getting college credit after a year of challenging coursework. 

Additionally, he said many of the incentives around AP courses still rely on testing outcomes.

“The College Board has set it up that way,” Walsh-Rock said. “Taking the test is what opens the door.”                                                        

From Hanlon’s perspective, the disadvantages of AP classes are not all about the test. He said there is more intellectual freedom in college that students who test out of liberal studies courses or graduate early could miss. 

“If you become really narrow early on, by the time you’re done with high school, you basically consider yourself done with a bunch of areas of knowledge,” Hanlon said. 

LiLi Jarvenpa, a DePaul senior studying political science, said if money and time were no object, she would take a wider breadth of college classes. 

Shuert, the other DePaul student, had a different perspective.

“The biggest benefit I got out of my AP classes was that the transferred credits get me out of classes I don’t want to take now.”

To this point, Hanlon wrote in his recent article — “Are AP Classes a Waste of Time?” — that “What’s supposed to be the beginning of inquiry too often becomes its ending.”

“AP is part of a credentialing arms race,” Hanlon said, a larger reflection of how testing and categorization in secondary education are too emphasized. 

However, many students take APs because they want to save money and time through transferable college credits. 

Students pay a $98 fee to take most AP tests, though some schools and districts cover that cost to make AP more accessible. Even if they have to pay, test scores that qualify for transfer credit at their chosen university could equate to thousands of dollars in credit hours saved.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and part of that was definitely because I wanted to be set up well for college and wanted to save money,” Jarvenpa said, the DePaul senior.

Hanlon said AP, which began in the early 1950s, was not designed to save students on college costs, yet has been shoe-horned into doing so, which he thinks is not an adequate solution to rising college costs. 

“Are we basically taking the people who have the least opportunity and the least financial access, and giving them the lesser version of the education that we really ought to promise them?” Hanlon asked.

In addition to the prospect of saving money and challenging herself, Jarvenpa said she was under the impression that AP classes looked good on college applications.  

Erin Updegraff, executive director of DePaul’s first-year recruitment & admission, agrees that if students were successful in APs, they would likely be successful at DePaul. 

Nevertheless, universities across the country vary in terms of what AP credit they accept. 

Some of America’s most elite institutions, including Dartmouth University and Brown University, do not accept AP credit, while universities like Harvard and MIT only accept credit if the student scores a “5” on the exam. 

Colby College, where Hanlon teaches, does not accept transfer credit for AP English Literature and AP English Language.

As an English professor who teaches freshmen students, Hanlon said he is tasked with undoing the formulaic and surface-level writing that AP English classes often teach students. 

Updegraff said DePaul is more generous with its AP credit policy than other schools, accepting scores of “5,” “4” and sometimes “3,” depending on the class. 

She said DePaul’s acceptance policy gives students flexibility, not necessarily for early graduation, but to pursue a double major, minors or study abroad without worrying about graduating on time. 

Though experience in AP classes demonstrates preparedness for college-level coursework, Updegraff said students who take too many AP courses and struggle in high school concern admissions representatives. 

“We like to see that students are able to be successful,” Updegraff said. “I’d rather see a student that took less rigor and did really well across the board than a student that took a lot of rigor and did not do well.”

Despite criticisms of the College Board — especially in light of their curriculum changes to the AP African American Studies course — Walsh-Rock said he was impressed by the board’s increased support for teachers and students in recent years. 

One such improvement is AP Central, which includes instructional resources and feedback to help those teaching and taking AP courses gain confidence with the curriculum.

“It’s not that students couldn’t do it, but to do it without support and scaffolding I think sets students up to really struggle,” Walsh-Rock said, the DePaul professor.

Some students take AP courses to challenge themselves. Others are pushed by their school districts. Other students think the AP curriculum provides the best chance at getting ahead in college. 

Whatever the motivation, Hanlon believes AP is emblematic of greater problems with the American educational system, including high costs and unequal distribution of resources between districts.

“I don’t think students pursuing AP are doing anything wrong,” Hanlon said. “I understand the reasons students would do it, but I just think systems owe you more and should do better by you.”