With just a quick Google search, a student can find the top five easiest Advanced Placement exams to self-study for — packaged like shortcuts to boost a college application. On paper, self-studying APs reads as healthy ambition, suggesting that students are motivated enough to go beyond the courses offered on their campus. In practice, self-studying is a symptom of a competitive academic culture that constantly raises the bar, leaving students feeling pressured to expand their workload to keep up with the ever-shifting standards of college admissions. Once that mindset takes over, the sid e effects include not only personal burnout, but also reinforcement of unrealistic academic standards within our community.
Self-studying is common among students who already have experience with a topic, such as a world language, because they don’t need a full year of classroom instruction. There are also only 17 AP courses available at Lynbrook out of the 38 offered by the College Board, which encourages students interested in other topics to take the course outside of school.
However, self-studying allows students to take as many AP tests as possible, often for the sake of college admissions. Most prevalent in our school culture now is the expectation that students are taking more and more AP exams, with 89% of Lynbrook students taking at least one AP exam in 2025. The question is no longer whether to take AP exams, but how many.
“Seeing everyone take all kinds of APs, there’s a feeling that you can’t be worse than other people,” sophomore Hannah Zhang said. “That fear of missing out led me to take multiple APs this year.”
That mindset reflects how academic comparison has become embedded in daily decision-making, leading students to pile on self-studying on top of an already packed schedule. The benchmarks students are comparing themselves to are wildly distorted. Taking 10 AP exams over four years of high school is not the average experience, and it shouldn’t be a standard that students feel pressured to meet. The reality is, only about 1% of students nationwide took 10 or more APs from 2022-25. However, when students see one person hitting that number, it’s easy to feel behind. If we continue to promote unrealistic standards, we harm not only ourselves but also community mental health and perceptions of success.
“You shouldn’t be doing something because everybody else is doing it,” college and career counselor Shveta Bagade said. “You still need to balance school work with extracurricular activities, health, family and friends.”
With self-studying, students are expected to study months’ worth of content on their own time, resulting in late-night study sessions and cramming days before the exam. The mental and physical toll of that pressure is difficult to ignore as students sacrifice sleep, social lives and their overall health in the pursuit of scores.
“When I was self-studying AP Chemistry, I woke up at 5 a.m. and studied until school started,” sophomore Trina Somadder said. “When I came home, I would finish my homework and then study again.”
These schedules are unsustainable, especially when students choose courses they have no experience in just to take more. It’s more realistic to self-study an AP course you already have prior knowledge in—for example, self-studying AP Biology if you’ve taken biology before. Students should be intentional when considering self-studying instead of just choosing the “easiest” courses in hopes of earning a high score.
“If I were to self-study microeconomics, which I have no experience in, that would take away from everything else I have to do,” Somadder said.
Self-studying with prior knowledge can save students’ time. Taking the year-long course does not only foster strong study habits, but also provide hands-on experience as students can receive live feedback from teachers. Most beneficially, students can carry the routines built in AP classes past high school, instead to just memorizing and forgetting content while self-studying.
“In the class, we get to be collaborative and conquer the material because it’s challenging, even for the most organized student,” AP Biology teacher Nicole Della Santina said. “We also learn test-taking and study strategies that students can take with them to college.”
It’s worth asking what we are actually measuring when we build schedules around self-studying and maximizing AP scores. Self-worth shouldn’t be defined by how many exams a student can take because not everyone has the mental or physical capacity to carry the same workload. The person sitting next to you in class is not on the same timeline, and there is no final destination or definite measure of success.
There is no formula for college admissions. Self-studying multiple AP exams is not a prescription. Even after chasing score after score, the desire to achieve more remains firm. Academic pressure doesn’t stop at APs, as extracurriculars and grades are all compared. Thus, it is impossible to satisfy the standards that surround us. That time spent pushing yourself over the edge could be focused on exploring meaningful passions, catching up on sleep and self-care. Whether you’ve earned eight AP scores or two, your well-being should always come before the score.
