Everyone has dreams of going to college. Prestigious names like Harvard and Stanford fill every college senior’s minds. But what does it take to get into a college. Application councilor Lilly Fields claims it takes “at least ten AP classes throughout your four years of high school.”
Students are now beginning to sacrifice their social lives and interest in sports in exchange for an extra AP class. “I quit volleyball this year so I could take AP psychology,” says Newpark High School junior James Davis. The AP testing board has also added over ten new AP classes in the past two years, including Canadian history, meditation, and game theory.
Stress levels are also rising for high school students. Recent studies show that students taking at least two AP classes suffer from 50% more stress than students taking zero or one AP classes. “The only way I can get into college is if I take at least twelve AP classes,” says Rosehill Park freshman Lucy Carter.
Colleges are also starting to prefer students that can simply learn information than those who can analyze and actually understand the information given to them. “We would rather have students that get A’s in classes than students that discover new things or take a different approach to learning,” comments admittance officer Kelly Wright.
Unfortunately, this new outlook on the admission process is leading to unimaginative students who can recite an entire textbook but cannot formulate their own ideas and exemplify creativity. But, who cares about creativity, just so long as we have people who got 5’s on all their AP’s.