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When students sign up for Advanced Placement classes, most have one goal in mind: to score at least a three on the AP exam, the minimum score required to receive college credit for the course.

All year long, many students work tirelessly to maintain passing grades in these college level classes, meanwhile committing a year’s worth of subject matter to memory in class and during after school reviews. This, along with mastering the AP writing style for the essay portion of the test, makes up the rigorous workload of those students who wish to excel in Heritage’s highest level classes.

Like finals, AP exams test students on an accumulation of everything they’ve learned since the start of the course. However, at $90 a test—let alone the innumerable hours of work many students devote to preparing themselves—it’s safe to say the AP exams have a little more riding on them than an ordinary final.

After taking their AP’s, however, many advanced students also have to return during finals week to take an additional final exam because they’ve fallen short of the 90% GPA exemption policy—a concept which seems superfluous to junior Scott Golden. Balancing AP Chemistry, AP American History, and AP European History, Golden feels three cumulative exams are enough.

“If maintaining “B” averages in three college level classes doesn’t prove I’m competent in the subjects, I don’t see how a final will,” he said.

Several teachers share students’ sentiment about the policy when it applies to AP students.

Devoting the year to making sure her students are prepared for the AP French exam in May, Ms. Mapes said she sees no reason to make them take an additional final exam.

“I believe if someone has worked very hard to take this exam, they should not have to be penalized twice,” she said of her AP French seniors.

Mrs. Gregor said that while the policy may seem unjust when applied to students who actually strive to make the grade, there are many students who treat AP classes as unimportant.

“I understand the plight of the students who work extremely hard to do well in AP Chemistry,” she said. “Unfortunately, there are some students who don’t put in that kind of effort, and over whom the final grade still holds sway.”

While American Heritage’s final exam policy requires all freshmen, sophomores, and juniors to maintain at least a 90% class average in order to qualify for exemption, it is redundant to force AP students to comply. It seems unfair that, after taking a three hour cumulative and intensive exam on a subject, a student should have to sit through an additional final in class if he or she has managed to make a “B” in that class. Heritage should lower its exemption policy average requirement for AP courses to an 80%, especially when seniors are allowed an average of 70% in any class to exempt, regardless of class level or rigor. If Heritage considers AP status when calculating students’ GPA’s, it should definitely weigh that factor into the exemption policy.