As the second semester rolls around, so does the preparation for the impending 2025-’26 school year. With the underclassmen’s variety of AP courses widening for next year, the current AP students are faced with the responsibility of providing feedback on their courses.
All AP students are given a survey in each of their AP classes where the questions range from ratings for “How long does the workload take outside of school?” to “How prominent is group work in this class?” The results of these surveys are then presented to the prospective students in each of their related classes.
Though the graphical representations of the rating questions on a scale of one to five evoked some attention from the students, the written responses from the AP students garnered the most attention. Some of the anonymous responses offered genuine advice to guide students to success in the classes, such as “Make sure to finish all of your formative work for quality feedback.”
On the other hand, some comments had the effect of borderline scaring certain students, with one example being, “If you didn’t get over a 95 average in Precalculus, don’t even consider taking this course,” in a presentation for AP Calculus AB. For a course like Precalculus, an already notoriously difficult course in junior year, it is common for students to struggle with keeping their grades up, much less consistently over a 95. It was later discovered that the comment was written by a student who mistakenly thought the survey was for AP Calculus BC.
However, the damage was already done: seeing a comment like this among a sea of statements that agree that AP Calculus AB is a challenging course, even in comparison to AP Calculus BC, made many students go into a frenzy about whether they should even consider AP Calculus AB.
Other than those kinds of mistakes in the surveys, there are people who view the reviews as a tedious task in the middle of class. This risks misinterpretation as the example above, or even sensationalized feedback that end up scaring students away from taking a certain course.
However, one person’s experience is not a set indicator for another student’s. Though objective feedback on course reviews, such as questions on the curricula or homework, can help one grasp an idea of how much they would enjoy the course, subjective feedback like the anonymous comments must be taken with a grain of salt.
This is especially because most of the anonymous feedback bases grades as the measure of success in the respective course. Placing emphasis on grades in feedback only pushes the notion that courses are mainly taken for transactional purposes rather than a transformational experience that allows students the freedom to explore various fields of study. Yet, the most determining factor of most SIS students when it comes to course selections ends up being course rigor and GPA maintenance for the sake of their high school transcript, as opposed to the more valuable holistic academic high school experience. While course rigor and grades are undoubtedly imperative factors to consider, course selections are an exciting time to branch out to new areas of interest and even discover new passions.
Ultimately, yes, the course reviews may act as a helpful tool for understanding for students pondering between for students who are pondering on whether to take a challenging AP course. However, their extreme comments that are sometimes written as a joke can act as an unnecessary repellent to students who may potentially benefit from the course in the long run.
Students, remember that while course reviews offer guidance, the final choice should be up to you.
