The Real Cost of High Schoolers Taking Advanced Classes: What Parents Miss
It was 10:47 PM last Tuesday when I finished folding laundry and noticed the strip of light under my 16-year-old son’s bedroom door. I knocked once and pushed it open, and found him slouched over his desk, cheek propped on one hand, AP Bio notebook splayed open in front of him. A half mug of cold coffee sweated on the corner, a crumpled bag of cheese puffs lay half open by his foot, and his eyes were so red they looked like he’d been chopping onions. “You said you’d be in bed by ten,” I said, quiet so I wouldn’t startle him. He didn’t look up. “I still don’t get the electron transport chain, and my AP Lang rough draft is due first period tomorrow. I can’t fail this test.” He paused, then mumbled something I almost didn’t catch. “I shouldn’t have signed up for both.”
When we met with his guidance counselor back in May, we all nodded along when she suggested adding two AP classes to his sophomore year schedule. He’d gotten straight A’s in honors classes in middle school, he’s always been quick to pick up new concepts, and every college admissions blog we’d read says advanced classes look better on transcripts. We were proud, even a little excited. All the parents I talk to at soccer games act like loading up on advanced classes is just what you do for a smart kid. The only cost we talked about was the $97 AP exam fee we’d have to pay next spring.
It took two months for the other costs to start showing up. First, he quit the photography club he’d begged to join the year before. “No time,” he said, when I asked why. He used to spend every Sunday morning wandering the local nature reserve with his beat up old DSLR, coming home with rolls of photos of sunsets and herons and weird moss growing on fallen logs. He hasn’t pulled that camera out of his closet since the second week of school. Then he started skipping post-soccer practice ice cream runs with his friends. Then last month, he fell asleep on the couch at 6 PM, face down in a plate of spaghetti, before we even had dinner.
At back to school night last week, his AP Bio teacher pulled me aside. “He’s one of the sharpest kids I’ve got,” she said. “But he’s rushing through every assignment just to get it done. Last week he turned in a lab report three pages shorter than the requirement, and he told me he just didn’t have time to fix it. He’s burnt out already, and we’re only a quarter of the way through the year.” After that, I talked to another mom whose son is taking three APs this year. She told me he’s been getting tension headaches three times a week, and the doctor said they’re stress-related. This isn’t just my kid, I realized. This is a thing.
People talk about advanced classes like they’re just an investment, but every investment has a hidden cost. For some kids, it’s the loss of the unstructured time that teenagers actually need to figure out what they care about. For my son, it was the thing that made him him—the photography, getting to mess around with his friends after practice—that got pushed off the schedule to make room for another test. It’s not that advanced classes are bad. My older daughter took three APs junior year, loved every minute, and still had time to work at the local coffee shop and go to football games. It works for some kids. But when we push all kids to load up on advanced classes regardless of what else is going on in their lives, we don’t talk about what we’re asking them to give up. Too often, it’s their joy, their rest, or the things that will actually make them happy long after graduation.
After back to school night, I sat down with my son at the kitchen table after dinner, no phones, no distractions. I didn’t tell him he had to drop a class, or that he was doing too much. I just gave him a piece of paper and a pen and asked him to write down the five things that matter most to him right now, in order. He sat there for ten minutes, chewing on the end of the pen, and when he was done, the list went: 1. Having enough energy for soccer practice, 2. Getting to take photos on weekends, 3. Having time to hang out with my friends, 4. Getting into a good state school, 5. Having two APs on my transcript. That was all we needed to see.
We called his counselor the next day, and got him switched out of AP Bio into the regular honors section. Most high schools let you change your class level the first six weeks of the semester, that’s something a lot of parents don’t remember to ask about. We also set two hard rules he agreed to: no studying after 10 PM, and we block out every Saturday afternoon as completely unstructured, no homework, no commitments, whatever he wants to do. It’s not a big dramatic fix, it’s just two small concrete changes that fit our life.
It’s been two weeks since he switched. Last Saturday, he pulled his camera out of the closet, walked down to the river, and came home with a dozen photos of oak trees turning orange. He made it to bed before 10:30 every single night last week. His last honors bio quiz was a 92, which is higher than any of the test scores he got in AP Bio. We still don’t know what this will mean for college applications down the line. There’s still a chance that having one less AP on his transcript will keep him out of his top choice school. That’s the trade off, right? There’s no perfect answer here. But right now, the cost of keeping that advanced class on his schedule was higher than any benefit it could give us. We’re taking it one semester at a time, and so far, that’s enough.
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