Students around BSM are both prepping for and taking AP exams over the next two weeks. These AP tests are comprehensive exams for a college-level course and are equivalent to one semester in college. The exams give students an opportunity to get credit for their future college classes so they don’t have to pay for the expensive class.

Taking an AP exam can benefit students and their family in more than one way. When students start to think about college one of the biggest factors can be money. The average college course can get up to $15,000, which can cause students to have to look at less expensive schools. AP exams help students overcome that problem. These exams can count as a full college course, which means students and their families don’t have to pay nearly as much money.

Although money is a huge reason for taking AP exams, there are several other reasons for taking these tests, one of them being the ability to have a free space in their schedule. While in college students need to figure out how to balance their time while still in all of their classes. Taking an AP exam can open up much more time into their daily schedule. This space can be taken up with other classes, more time at work, study time, or an extra space to just gather their thoughts.

Students throughout BSM have been preparing for these tests the whole semester. AP classes in BSM are molded around the AP exams so that the students that want to take the tests have the information fresh in their head. These students go beyond what the class teaches them and study on their own. “For the AP [European History] exam I studied a chapter a night to prepare,” senior Lillee Couture said.

BSM offers AP classes, but students do not have to take them to be eligible for an AP exam. Students can find other ways to prepare for these exams outside of the classroom. These options can be online courses, pre-tests, and textbooks, all of which are made specifically for AP exams. “For AP Gov., I watched a lot of youtube videos about the test and the information I needed to study,” Senior Buzz Williams said.

As much as these AP exams can benefit a student, they can be very challenging to study for. AP exams are college-level courses which can make them much more difficult than the average high school class. In some situations students find themselves studying for the exams all day. Students are given a lot of homework in their AP classes and are also given extra study guides to do before the exam. “There was a lot of teaching yourself because the teachers couldn’t go over everything,” Lillee Couture said.