A Student’s Guide to AP Classes

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It’s quite difficult. It’s heavy in terms of formula and you need to gain some spatial intuition to understand the subject. You need to be able to start representing things in three-dimension and get some kind of ease into visualizing things in your head, and try to make that bridge between the algebra—the computation—and the ...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “Because of the fact that Government is typically a semester class—and we get to teach AP Government for the entire year—it’s not as difficult as some of the other AP courses because you have a longer time to teach less content, so you are able to go a little slower. Also, the free response questions that they are having this yea...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It’s pretty rigorous; a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of stuff to learn. So it is definitely meant to be an introductory college level course.” (Leif Peterson, teacher) “On a scale of one to ten, probably a seven.” (Olivia Michael, senior) “You still have to work hard, but it’s not one of the top three hardest ...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “The difficulty level is high, but there’s a lot of preparation for the students that takes place and really my biggest recommendation for any student department-wide is make sure you take the Spanish 4 class. The students that take Spanish 4 are not shocked at all by what we do in AP and it’s trying to jump from Spanish 3 to AP witho...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It’s a college level class, so it is difficult. It is designed for the non-honors math student. But it does mean you have to up your game, that you actually have to do the homework, not just copy the answers from the back of the textbook or you fail the exams. It is really theory based, so you have to know what you are doing.” (Sue ...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It is a college level class. It is difficult, but achievable.” (James Fieberg, teacher) “The class is definitely very difficult, but just like any other class it varies with what type of person you are and what type of subject you are good at. But, in general, I think it is a very difficult class.” (Chloe Carty, senior) “I...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It is an AP class, so it does require extra work and extra effort, but the subject material is really interesting and is applicable to everyone, so there’s a lot of student buy-in, which I think helps off-set some of the difficult work requirements. So I would say it’s challenging, but it’s not out of reach of anyone.” (Allison W...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “I think any student can be successful in it, but for some it is going to take more work than others.” (Jamie Solis, teacher) “I think it’s fairly easy because a lot of it is common sense[,] you learn a couple technical things, but then the rest is kind of just figuring out where stuff goes and linking things together.” (Tina St...

What would you say the difficulty level of the class is? “The class itself wasn’t too hard. The test was really hard, though.” (Ann Fulton, senior) “I would say pretty difficult, like seven out of ten.” (Colton Dister, senior) “It’s the first time that students are being asked to work at a college level and you can really feel it. It’s really hard.” (R. Lewis Cordell, teac...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “Medium.” (Rachel Merino-Ott, teacher) “On a scale of one to ten, I would give AP Lit a seven or eight.” (Nicole Morris, alumna) “It’s a difficult class. It is not the class for kids who just want to read poetry, you have to analyze and stuff. If you’re interested in that kind of stuff and you are very engaged and if yo...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “AP Language is a skills-based course versus a content-based course, so it is not about work level or work amount, it is more about the skills you bring to the table. If you are coming to the table with lots of skills as far as being able to unpack complex texts and read super difficult prose, then you would not have such a difficult time. Ho...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “I would put it as one of the top three most difficult classes in high school… I think students deal with [either math or concepts most of high school] and when you get to these two classes you have to merge the two… Even if you get a B in AP Chemistry… you should never hang your head… I teach one of the hardest classes in my opini...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “I think it’s very challenging actually, I think it’s something for people who are going to take math very seriously. We even put in our syllabus, ‘Hey it’s not just about hard work, you have to really have good math aptitude to be successful in the types of problems that they ask you to have, but it requires a commitment. You ha...

What would you say is the difficulty level of this class? “It’s a challenging class. I would say it’s one of the harder AP’s as all AP sciences are I think. So if I were ranking it one to ten I’d say it’s like an eight.” (Courtney Goode, teacher)  ”Out of one to ten, it’s a good eight or nine. When I came into AP Bio, I wasn’t really expecting the rigor we were expected to follow, a...