In the spring of 2023, WAHS and other Albemarle County high schools adopted a stringent new rulebook for students looking to take Advanced Placement classes, starting with the class of ‘26. We were barred from taking AP classes as freshmen and then faced a total cap of nine APs across our three remaining years of high school. These restrictions were retracted before this school year, but they still risk permanently marring the records of the two brief cohorts they affected.
Sophomores and juniors chose our current classes before the policy was revoked. By inexplicably choosing to roll back the limit after students had received our schedules—and long after we had selected them—the division locked us into a year of classes that were selected with the limit in mind. The ban no longer exists, but our schedules haven’t changed much. Change did indeed happen, though: as late as two weeks into the year, the counseling department was flooded with students trying to change their schedules. While they tried to accommodate students’ requests, counselors simply (and one would think, obviously) had much less flexibility with schedules than they had in the spring. The only thing the county created with the late rollback was an administrative headache for students and staff.
In one way, the sudden rollback might be a greater problem than the limit itself. College applications from WAHS ‘26 and ‘27 students will feature fewer AP courses. However, now that the limit is gone, institutions will be informed that WAHS does not limit APs. At a glance, it will seem as if these classes mysteriously decided to take fewer high-level courses. Thus, the division risks making members of these graduating classes less attractive to colleges than our predecessors, our antecedents, and most importantly, our competition from other high schools.
Make no mistake: I’m relieved that the division rolled back the AP limit. However, their timing has trapped students in unfavorable schedules and created a looming communication headache when it’s time for those students to pursue higher education. The best time to un-limit APs would have been never, but the second-best would have been any time before crucial schedule decisions were finalized. The approach the county ended up taking comes in a very distant third.
