By Maddie Peloff ’16

As students file into their respective classrooms on AP testing day, few are thinking about the questions College Board will ask them in the survey before they take the test. They worry about the test material, not about any personal information or questions regarding their actual class.

However, to a select few students, these questions require answers slightly different from their other test-taking peers. Instead of checking off the box that tells College Board they took the class in a traditional classroom setting, these students check a box that explains their unique situation: rather than taking the actual AP class, these students are only taking the AP exam.

This option makes the AP program unique. In other college credit programs, such as the International Baccalaureate Program, students are required to take the class before they may take the exam. In the AP program, a student may decide that he or she knows enough about a particular topic to take the exam. Just like any other student that takes the exam, these students, depending on their scores, may receive college credit.

In order to sign up for the exam, students first should talk to their counselor or either counselors Jamii Avery or Elizabeth Al-Atrash, the two AP coordinators, and explain why they feel they are proficient enough to take the exam. “We generally wouldn’t allow somebody to take an exam unless we felt that they could do well on it, because there is no reason for a student to take an AP exam if they are not going to do pretty well on it,” said Al-Atrash.

In fact, not only does a student’s poor AP score reflect poorly on him or herself, it reflects poorly on the school, even if he or she did not take the class. Even though the student did not spend his or her year learning the specifics of the curriculum with a teacher, his or her score is reported along with the rest of the students who did, reflecting on the teacher’s average scores as well as the school’s.

Generally, the students who take AP exams take exams of languages they are fluent in such as Spanish, French or even English. AP Spanish teacher Maria Peterson explained that she sees this happen every once in a while. Sometimes, she helps students prepare for the exam, but occasionally, she is surprised when a name she doesn’t know appears on the list of students who took the test. Despite this, AP scores are not Peterson’s priority. “AP scores don’t affect me. I don’t let that bother me, I just want them to try their best,” said Peterson.

While students have the option of taking an AP exam without taking the class, they are often urged to take the class instead, because an AP class offers unique education that has more to offer than just college credit.