The College Board officially offers nearly 40 AP courses. Here at Benson, you can take a whopping 11 of them. While it would be totally infeasible for our school to offer all 40 AP classes, there are a few classes I’m really surprised we don’t have, namely AP Physics 2 and AP Chemistry.

It’s no secret that many Benson students are aiming to pursue some field of engineering after graduating. Physics and Chemistry are both incredibly important subjects across different fields of engineering, and both these APs can really help build understanding of their respective topics. Chemistry is also especially important to many medical fields, and I’m sure AP Chemistry could be a nice option for our Health Occupations students.

There are other benefits to AP, too. Personally, the increased challenge of AP classes has really helped me feel more assured about my future college courses and has made me more confident in my other classes. Additionally, the rigor and workload of these classes can help form connections between students who otherwise might not have interacted with each other.

So why don’t we have more? It’s my understanding that student interest is one of the major factors for whether or not a class is offered at our school. When asked about it, several of my classmates, even those who rarely take any AP courses, have expressed interest in a hypothetical AP Chemistry class, with one even saying it “would kick serious amounts of ass.” A few students also expressed interest in the AP Economics classes, though the split between AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics, in addition to Personal Finance, would mean Benson would need to teach a total of four economics classes, which might be a bit much. AP Physics 2 was harder to speak to people about, due to AP Physics 1 being a prerequisite, but as someone who took AP Physics 1 last year, I would have loved to take AP Physics 2 this year.

I definitely think that, at least for AP Chemistry, the interest is absolutely already there. There are a lot of AP classes that I think Benson students could be interested in and benefit from, and I think it’s a shame that we don’t really offer very many.