Advanced Placement

“That was the free-est test I’ve ever took. Free 5 for sure.” — First of all, happy 50th post, my initial goal making this account was to use Medium as a tool to motivate me to write more. I think I’ve been improving, but I just don’t have the chance to display that very well on movie reviews or life updates, which is…

Dear The College Board, — This is Henry, a high school sophomore from an international high school in China. Students here take, on average, just about 12 AP courses for the entirety of their high school career. Sounds like a lot, right? It is a lot. But that’s the norm for Chinese high school students…

Laughter is society’s prime source of relief in times of social, political, or economical tumult. From the cheerful cries of “Ongheya” by ancient Korean laborers as they worked themselves to exhaustion, to a comedian standing in front of a crowd making jokes about feminism or ISIS, laughter is relied upon…

Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of human activity and its impact on the earth’s physical and cultural landscapes. It explores the ways in which people interact with their environment, including the ways in which they use and alter the land, the patterns of…

Countless numbers of students and their families are besieged by this question, especially as the new school year approaches. Are AP classes worth the effort and stress? Do they really replicate college classes? Will they thwart a student’s creative drive and turn them into a fact machine? …

These three tempting mistakes will hurt your score. — For many students, “analyze the speaker’s choices” is a confusing new task. In previous English classes, they were graded for how well they could figure out the correct meaning of a passage. They were graded for how well they could remember a list of rhetorical device names. …

You can’t start answering Question 1 until you’ve taken a stance! — It’s easy to take a side on an issue when you’ve never heard a convincing argument for the other side. It’s also easy to shrug and say you can’t pick a side because there are good arguments for both. It’s harder to truly listen to both sides and take an…

…and what you can do about it as a parent or educator — AP scores were announced today, and my youngest son, Jamil, couldn’t hide his smile. A reserved 17-year-old by nature, he calmly announced: “Ma, AP scores just came out.” I casually looked over, masking my eagerness to find out. I caught the glimmer in his eye, suggesting the results were good. …

Well, I’ve been gone for a while. That’s what you call 5 APs! I had AP Java, AP Calculus BC, AP English Language, AP Spanish Language, and AP Physics 2. I can’t officially talk about what went on in the tests but safe to say I believe I got a…