Riley Pierce and Noah Bunting
eSomthin Staff
As the first set of exams are approaching fast many students are second-guessing enrolling in high-level courses such as Advanced Placement (AP), Honors, and/or College Credit Plus (CCP) classes. Higher-level courses require more time put into each assignment and studying for each test, for some this is more preparation then they are used to for a class.
High-level courses offer a big payoff for the hard work students put in. For AP and CCP, students can acquire college credit for much less than a college course would cost. But taking a higher level course just to get credits or to raise your GPA could end in disaster.
Amy Farrar, who teaches honors English to juniors, explained, “Many students take all the honors courses to help them to get a 4.0 GPA or over. However, It is more effective to take honors classes only if you are sure they are the right fit for you. Most colleges will not care about the difference between a 4.1 or a 4.6 GPA.”
So how do colleges distinguish between students who have the same GPA? Farrar said that often the difference between getting accepted or denied can be a sport or doing work on a project that reflects the subject you have interest in.
We also spoke to four current Perrysburg students taking higher level courses about how they feel about their classes. If you are looking at taking a higher level course, here is some advice from other students:
Senior Hailey Woods says, “it is a ton of work. Make sure you study and give it your all.”
Senior Julianne Rowland Miller followed that up, “you can’t just walk in there and expect to ace everything. It takes a lot of work”.
Junior Braydon Perez stated that if you are going into higher level courses, “you better know what you are doing, you should be looking for a challenge where you think you can really understand the material.”
“It teaches you a lot of valuable skills that really helps you prepare for college,” says Senior Jacob Prokup, “they are essentially mini college courses to help get used to it”.
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