Dear College Board

Dear College Board,

As someone who has taken 12.67 Advanced Placement courses each year and, over three years, all 38 AP tests you offer, I feel particularly qualified to say that there are simply not enough AP tests and would hereby like to advocate for the expansion of the Advanced Placement program. I have easily become fluent in vital languages like Chinese and Spanish, useless languages like Japanese, Italian, German, and French, as well as dead languages, nonetheless given an AP, like Latin. Yet, I also have the desire to take AP Old Norse and become fluent in a language many of my peers would correctly term “useless.” While I am aware of the costs associated with creating an AP test and finding proctors, I anticipate that it will be a very successful course. Nevertheless, even if only 100 people take it, the College Board will make a whole $9400.

As I enter my senior year of high school, I would also like to take AP Antarctican History. Last year I was enrolled in so-called AP World History, yet we seemed to skip the history of Antarctica. Though we discussed the history of the other six continents, there was never any discussion of the ice-filled land that is inhabited by diverse species in unique gelid ecosystems. In order to gain a true understanding of the world I request that this course be created. Even more importantly, the College Board should create an AP course detailing the history of Atlantis—located in the ocean and ruled by Atlas, Poseidon’s firstborn child, it has clearly had a very significant impact on the development of the world we see today.

It is also important that AP tests be upped in rigor to truly determine the masters who deserve a score of five. The best way to accomplish this is to halve the time allotted for the AP tests, while still giving the same number of questions. For example, for the AP United States History test, why should students be given a whole 55 minutes for only 55 questions? Instead, students should be given exactly 27.5 minutes to answer the questions. It is my strong belief that if students need a whole minute for each question they do not deserve a five on the test anyway.

Hence, there is only one true way to push the students of our generation to be their best selves: AP tests must be made more difficult and we must add more courses. In order to gain a well-rounded education, students need to push themselves to learn what few others know.

Best,

Nikki Daniels