Will it save a student’s time to earn free college credit by taking rigorous classes such as AP courses? Taking advanced classes during your high school year is totally worth it due to how it boosts a student’s GPA, receiving outstanding scholarships, and having a higher chance of getting into prestigious universities. 

According to the Arizona State University Admission, AP courses allow students to prepare for first-year college courses because it helps them develop college-level academic skills and experience having huge amounts of school work. In addition to first-year college courses, these classes are similar in terms to AP classes that students take in high school. Hence, it is important to have these experiences because it makes students an idea of the rigor and struggles that they would face during their college years. If a student is interested in attending one of the prestigious universities, then taking AP courses will definitely help them gain the skills and knowledge for their future educational life. 

Aside from being prepared for college, Kimberly Austin, a counselor at Thunderbird High School, said that taking AP and Honors classes will add points to the weighted GPA in a student’s transcript. These transcripts are used to keep track of a student’s progress throughout their high school year, which includes the core GPA, unweighted GPA, and weighted GPA. This GPA is used for class ranks, which obviously depends on whether the student has a high GPA in an AP class, or the student has a high GPA in a regular class. Furthermore, the transcripts are important because colleges look at these documents to view a student’s performance during their high school years due to their interest in accepting a student who can tolerate the challenges and rigor of AP courses. These Colleges and Universities check this certain GPA for “admissions and scholarship money” that allows a student to save the time and money they need to apply their tuition fee. 

Ms. Austin also mentioned that taking AP tests as an AP student will determine whether the student can skip a course that they were supposed to take for college. However, this depends if a student receives a high score on the tests they take. For instance, once a student obtains a 4-5 AP score, then they can skip this specific course that they were supposed to be taking, and it will replace it with a higher and more difficult course that suits the student. Thus, taking AP/Advanced classes result in taking a test that can allow a student to hop onto a different level of course compared to the class they were about to take. 

As stated by Houston Hull, a senior, taking AP classes helps him prepare for the SAT and CSAT and receive “free [AP Test] college credit” because these courses allow him to understand the material better due to its productive learning environment. Also, he recommends more students take AP subjects because he finds these courses a “valuable way for a student to spend their time on.”

Of course, these difficult classes may be time-consuming and stressful for students to take; however, the hard work that a student applies to these courses will certainly benefit their college application. Personally, Ms. Austin said that she does not recommend students, who are struggling to get an A in their regular classes, to take advanced courses. This is entirely true because students that find it difficult to meet the requirements of boosting their classes to advanced are most likely not going to be able to have AP/ Honors classes. Thus, taking these classes requires accepting the challenge and can actually tolerate the difficulties in these advanced courses. 

Overall, advanced classes are definitely worth taking because of the benefits that students will receive from applying and the studying skills that they can obtain for their college life. Although some students may not suit the requirements for taking such courses, it is best to acknowledge that AP/Honors classes are a considerable opportunity to prepare for a student’s future career.