By Nedaat Masiat ’26
Advanced Placement exam season is upon us! Derby High School students have the opportunity to take 10 different AP courses: AP Psychology, AP Seminar, AP Language and Composition, AP Literature and Composition, AP Calculus AB, AP Spanish, AP Environmental Science, AP Art, AP US Government and Politics, and AP US History. These exams are scored on a scale from 1 to 5, where a 3 or higher can usually get you college credit. The scores will be released in July, while these exams will take place over a span of two weeks. The first week is May 4 to May 8, and the second week is May 11 to May 15.
Some students started studying for these exams as long as three months ago, while others didn’t study at all. When Hailey Cartagena ‘26 was asked how she prepared for her exams, AP Psychology and AP Language and Composition, she said, “I started preparing for psych a long time ago, by just looking over my notes for at least ten minutes every night. For lang, I didn’t study much. I just reviewed some study materials starting two weeks before the exam.”
Our school administrators also allowed students to leave after their exam ended, if it was in the morning, or come to school late, if their exam was in the afternoon, so they didn’t have to attend any classes on the day of their AP exam — as long as they brought in a signed permission slip.
Now that these exams are finally over, students feel they can finally relax. A lot of these rigorous courses can take up a lot of a student’s time. The AP exam serves as a final exam, so teachers often stop assigning difficult work after it is over and shift to more hands-on, fun projects. It is so awesome to finally be “AP free!”
The Raider Press 