Are AP Exams our Impending Doom

Going into the first full week of May, sometimes I feel like I’m on my way to my impending doom. AP exams start May 4th, and are just a tiny bit important, even more so during junior year—the last full year of coursework colleges will see when we apply this fall.

Maybe we shouldn't be as stressed as we are about exams. Many have discussed how competitive admissions are in this day and time. But if one person were to decide to “chill out,” but the entire group as a whole doesn’t, then they simply fall behind if they wish to go to a school at the top of their rankings.

In a way, this is like the Prisoner's Dilemma thought experiment. If everyone, for example, cut their AP exams, extracurriculars, etc. in half, then people wouldn't be individually disadvantaged. But how much do rankings even matter? A lot of people could also just be aiming in the direction of stars just because they see others who aim for a specific one. Does everyone want to be there? I’ve personally

seen a lot of people talking about the idea that college as a collective is a “scam” on the internet, but that would fall onto the more extreme side of the spectrum.

But there are benefits to the schools that dominate the rankings year after year. Being surrounded by geniuses is a different environment, not to mention many of them are able to afford far more generous aid. And as the US typically has holistic admissions, AP exams aren’t the end all be all (unlike schools in some other countries, for example the infamous gaokao in China, or A levels in the UK). Yet, they still matter not even from an admissions standpoint (even if this can feel like fighting for your life to not fall into a pitless abyss, fighting to crawl out of it and into a path of life that you can’t even begin to fully visualize, because life takes so many twists and turns, but fighting for a chance at the life you envision either today or when you were maybe just six), they still matter for the same reason that something like culture might. Because people care and assign it value.

Through it all, at least for me art has both contributed to the insanity (as an AP art student who still has to finish a piece) and as a way to process everything. Art and the sciences and math has bled into each other, and in a way it’s only made the pieces better at conveying how it feels to attempt and fail to understand the Principal Axes Theorem.

Hopefully the next two (to three, for makeup/scheduling conflicts) of AP exams (and any college dual enrollment classes, school finals, etc.) go well for people who are taking it! And if you chose to take any of the AP Art and Design portfolio classes, those are due Friday, May 8 at 8 PM EST!