New AP Courses Offered Starting in the 2023-2024 School Year

Stuyvesant’s administration has introduced two new Advanced Placement (AP) courses that will be available for students to take in the 2023-2024 school year: AP African American Studies and AP Precalculus, the latter being mandatory for all Stuyvesant students who have completed Algebra II. The College Board has just begun offering these two new courses, which will be implemented in a select number of schools in the coming school year.

Some students are optimistic about the new AP Precalculus course, as its curriculum is roughly identical to that of the regular precalculus course. “If next year, everyone is required to take AP Precalculus, and AP Precalculus is much easier than regular precalculus curriculum anyway, I don’t think many people will mind because it literally is just going to be a free AP to add on. It won’t count toward their AP count either, so rising juniors can take up to four APs,” junior Mahir Hossain said. “With the new [AP] Precalculus option, a lot of people are going to be a lot more relaxed. I think the curriculum will stay more or less the same, if not [become] easier.”

Additionally, rising juniors are becoming more enthusiastic about the new AP courses. “AP Precalculus [is] a good change, because if it is the same curriculum and difficulty that Stuy’s traditional precalculus is, we might as well add that label,” sophomore Preena Patel said.

As for the new AP African American Studies course, which will be taught by English teacher Emilio Nieves, many rising juniors are looking forward to taking it despite it being a senior-priority class. “I am planning on taking AP Precalculus next year and AP African American Studies in my senior year. My only suggestion is to make [...] AP African American Studies [available] to more juniors. There is definitely a lot of interest [in the course],” Patel said.

Several students who have already taken precalculus and do not plan on taking AP African American Studies are unaffected by the program changes, but they are interested in seeing how the new course offerings affect the Stuyvesant community. “Some people might just not do AP United States History and a lot of people might do AP African American Studies, so I’m interested in seeing how that [...] holds up with the juniors and seniors,” Hossain said.

The introduction of new APs also prompted some students to have suggestions for other classes Stuyvesant can offer, given their seeming popularity among students. “[The College Board] didn’t add AP Anatomy and Physiology, which I heard the College Board was planning on introducing to Stuyvesant, which I think a lot of people would take, like juniors, seniors, and sophomores. Anyone would jump at the opportunity to take such a course, because a lot of us are planning to go [into] pre-med,” Hossain said.

For the future, students also expressed desires to have opportunities to take AP Research and AP Seminar, which are not offered at Stuyvesant. “AP Research and AP Seminar [are] more [opportunities] for students to broaden [...] and pick specific topics they want to do,” Hossain said. “I don’t really like how College Board rates you based on your research, but I do feel that it’s an opportunity for students to be more free and open about what they talk about, aside from the load of coursework [from] APs that have structuralized curriculums.”