Exams can be a stressful event for students, especially when these exams happen to be for an AP class. You will have worked, toiled and stressed either half a school year or full year to get to this sacred day: the AP exam day. The only difference between you and the person sitting next to you? You took the class in the fall; they took it in the spring. This means your neighbor has the concepts fresh in their mind, while you had to practice and refresh on an entire course along with your other classes for four-and-a-half months leading up to the test.

You are in the fall term AP class dilemma, one that puts your success, your scores on the college prep exam, and in some ways, your future in jeopardy.

This is a commonly overlooked aspect of these exams, and one that is a glaring problem with the two-term block schedule.

These fast paced and often work-heavy classes should prepare students primarily for the corresponding exam, and secondarily for college level learning. However, I’ve never heard that taking a four-and-a-half month break between the end of the fall semester AP class and the exam is a helpful experience.

In the majority of cases, students who take the class in the fall, when it’s not a year long class, earn a poor to average score on the test, or simply don’t take the test at all.

Considering the fact that we have to pay for these tests, I would feel cheated if I knew I wasn’t put in the best possible position to succeed on the exam.

Now, of course, this is inevitable when some classes are only offered in the fall. A student should have prior knowledge about which semester their AP class would take place in. Evidently, an AP in the spring is more convenient than an AP in the fall.

This can’t just be an issue that College Board and the district sweep under the rug, addressing it with a shrug and a “that’s just the way things are.” If they truly care about student success, this seems like an obvious area in need of revision.

In addition to this, you may see the AP enrollment numbers increase, as more students will want to take classes that corespond more with their fields of interest, along with the fact that they won’t have to put nine months of work in for a class that is half as long.

It sounds simple in concept, for all it would take is a biannual AP testing session for the given classes, or, in an even more extreme option, a change back to a different form of schedule: from blocks to full periods and year long classes again.

The former seems more appropraite and would drive up the sales of AP testing, providing an incentive to change.

It all comes down to a simple concept: the more time that sits between the time of learning and recalling, the less material is retained.