Students who push forward in academics may treat it like their personal sport. Some students make the headforth decision to take Advanced Placement classes while taking honors classes at the same time. 

“I’ve taken a lot: honors chemistry I think was my first one, honors English, honors geometry, etc,” Benjamin Beckwith, 12, said. 

The stacked amount of work from each advanced class can be overwhelming. 

“The workload has overwhelmed me. Specifically in both math and chemistry, ironically not as much in AP European history because Bachura and AP comes with a lot of resources online because it’s such a big class. It’s really easy to get help with that,” Lily Hunt, 10, said.

But for some, since they are used to balancing advanced classes, they seem to find that taking two at the same time is quite easy. 

“I like the challenge of both AP and honors classes, I feel like it’s good for me.

It’s helped my work ethic, and helped me balance things, like work, school, [and] personal things. It’s definitely really good for you to be able to reason through that and figure things out,” Dihya Aggur,11, said.

Many students’ AP classes often have higher workload than honors classes. 

“I’d say AP classes are ironically easier than honors. With AP it’s really easy to find resources with lots of examples of things. With honors it’s more specific to your class, but I’d say the workload is almost the same for the classes that I’m currently taking, especially with honors chemistry, that’s definitely the hardest for me,” Hunt said. 

However, opinions differ for each student.

“AP is so much harder, well AP chem is a lot. It requires more critical thinking and there is a lot more homework, it’s just a higher thinking base; like, you cannot just memorize everything, you actually have to be smart,” Aggur said. 

Overall, AP and honors classes differ on levels of difficulty from person to person, and people who like to take both at the same time may prefer a challenge.