(Sept. 29, 2010) — Three weeks into the school year, junior Bellen Avelar was weighing the pros and cons of taking AP classes. “I took AP classes for the experience and I wanted to challenge myself. But sometimes, I wonder if it’s really worth the trouble and my time,” Avelar said. After three schedule changes, her indecisiveness about these classes swayed further with the change of the AP requirements this year. For those who take AP classes, maintaining a competitive edge comes with a recently modified set of demands. Starting this year, taking the AP test will be a requirement for all AP classes — students will no longer be given the option of completing an assignment instead of taking the test. Counselor Karen Carlson said that even though testing is a requirement now, the opportunity of taking these classes is still the same and a wide network of APs will still be offered. “Our philosophy here at Clark is to open doors for every student,” Carlson said. “We don’t want to say, ‘We won’t let you take an AP class because you might fail the test.’” In previous years, some students have chosen not to partake in AP Testing. Now a senior, Olivia Vickson said she enjoyed the option of not testing last year for both her AP English and history classes. “I felt unprepared to take a test for a class that went by too fast,” Vickson said. “I knew I wouldn’t have gotten a passing score, so there was no point.” Vickson said that the AP experience should be more about taking the class rather than taking the test. “I took AP classes because I knew that they were more stimulating,” Vickson said, “I wanted to do more with my education and I did.” Carlson believes that if a student can reap the benefits of these classes, responsibility should be taken with them too. “Colleges would rather see [AP] tests than no tests at all when looking at students,” Carlson said. She also said that colleges and universities like to see that GPAs of these advanced students are not just inflated without evidence of knowledge. Yet it is not the colleges and universities who demand this new requirement. With the district’s budget cuts last year, Clark faced the possibility of losing the additional seventh period and had to work to cut a total of 21 classes off the 2010-2011 schedule. With less availability to students, contracts of agreement to the terms of AP classes were distributed prior to the school year due to the abuse of the AP system in previous years. “Many students didn’t have any intentions to commit to their classes by taking the test,” Carlson said. This lack of commitment concerns Carlson. “Colleges would rather see a one out of five on a test than no AP testing at all for a class,” she said. With the new requirement, related costs with these tests might be an issue for those not willing to pay $80 for the test. Avelar said, “It [AP testing] adds a lot of stress to my household where the money could be used for something more practical.” A change in the scoring system could lighten any stresses this new requirement may have caused. Unlike previous years, points will no longer be deducted for incorrect answers. However, Spanish teacher Julie Ann Melville thinks that there will not be much of a difference involved with the results. “Some students seem happy that it is different,” said Melville. “But is it really that much of a difference?” Tests are still to be scored based on the pre-exams by the College Board, which expects that the new scoring will not affect the difficulty of the test. As for the projected success of these changes, Melville said, “We’ll just have to wait and see how things go after this year.”