Advanced Placement (AP) tests are a crucial motive for many students to take AP classes.
The tests allow students to gain college credits for that class, which can be very beneficial because it gives students the opportunity to skip that type of class once they get to college.
In preparation for AP tests, all testing students had to meet in the Carlmont Student Union during the week of April 23. Students attended specific sessions depending on their last name.
Students that have last names starting with A through K were assigned to meet after school on Tuesday of that week, while students with last names starting with L through Z were set to meet after school on the Thursday. Thursday morning during zero period was open to all students in case certain people couldn’t attend their specified sessions.
Even with the extra session for all students, some still felt that it would have been beneficial for the school to assign more, as some students had to miss class time.
“I couldn’t make both of the afternoon sessions so I actually had to miss my zero period class for a day. I would definitely appreciate having more sessions or just bubbling in the instructional paper on the day of the test,” said Lily Gittoes, a sophomore.
Although some students may disagree with the supposed necessity of the sessions, they do have a valid purpose.
“The purpose of the sessions is to complete the preparatory steps on the AP answer documentation like bubbling in name, date of birth, codes, etc. so that valuable time is not lost when a student is taking the AP exam. All exams are timed and if they are spending it filling in this type of information, then they are losing time to answer questions being asked of them,” said Vice Principal Gregg Patner.
Due to the large amount of students taking AP tests, it was expected that some students were going to miss all of the sessions. If a student was to miss all possible sessions, there would still be an alternative.
“They would have to connect with the AP coordinator in order to set that up, but I am sure that it would be possible. It is not practical, however, to have many people miss this session as we have over 1000 people taking the exam,” Patner said.
AP tests are scheduled from May 7 to May 18 and although all official AP slug sessions have concluded, students can still find ways to do the preparatory work. Despite some drawbacks, the sessions overall accomplished their goal to benefit students in the long run.
“I think the AP slug sessions are overall beneficial because they save time for us on test day,” said sophomore Chloe Palarca-Wong.
