AP U.S. History (APUSH) is a more rigorous history class, compared to its alternative U.S. History (RUSH), and embraces the intensity of a college-level introductory course. While RUSH focuses on U.S. history in the 20th century, APUSH spans the entire scope of American history in depth, from Native American settlement to contemporary issues.
“I like that [APUSH is] really interesting and also that [the teachers] have you think about things rather than just telling you what it is,” junior Emily Hu said. “{The teachers are] OK with having differing views and they encourage you to think for yourself. That’s what I like about APUSH; they have you make your own interpretations.”
Hu credits the freedom of interpretation given to students to the class structure. When writing theses, students are provided with opposing opinions and evidence to form their personal view. During class, students read documents in their group and answer questions about the reading. The most stressful portion of the class for Hu is “testing season,” a very week filled with Document Based and Free Response essays and multiple choice questions.
Hu spends an average of an hour to an hour and a half outside of school daily on homework, which mostly constitutes reading assignments: chapter and document readings.
“You get a lot of reading and a lot of it's very unsupervised,” Hu said. “You just really have to do the homework. It's very easy to say, ‘Oh I’ll do it some other day.’ You have to do it all. Before testing season, you don't want to just [study] a timeline of events, you want to establish cause and effect and significance of different events.”