Until last month, University of Virginia students with high school Advanced Placement credit got first pick in course registration. But now, those students will no longer receive special status in choosing courses, school officials announced last month. The university also modified its course registration policies in other areas, including special treatment for students in its honors program.
The university's decision to level the playing field for students without AP credit comes from a noted "high correlation between wealth, location and AP credits," said junior Kathryn Serra, co-chair of the academic affairs committee of UVa's student council.
Many students with AP and International Baccalaureate credit come from wealthy backgrounds and are given more course opportunities in high school than their less-privileged peers, Serra added. The school's public status required a more "egalitarian" system of course registration, she said.
Thanks to the changes, which will be implemented starting with next year's class, students in UVa's honors program, known as Echols Scholars, will no longer have the same special privileges in course registration they once had, wrote Richard Handler, director of the Echols Scholars Program and associate dean for academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, in an e-mail to The Herald.
Currently, students in the Echols program register before everyone else, often shutting older students and concentrators out of classes they need to graduate, Serra said. Now honors students will register only before non-honors students in their grade level. Serra said the change creates a fairer system while maintaining the "important incentive" for prospective students.
"I personally think the system is real unfair as of now," said freshman Aaron Bloch, an Echols Scholar. "I register before my fourth-year (residential adviser)."
Though the changes will not affect current students, Bloch said, many Echols scholars who were considering Ivy League schools chose to attend Uva because of such privileges and see priority registration as an important factor in applicants' decisions.
But freshman Maria Fini had a different take on the situation. She said she earned AP and IB credits in high school coming from a low-income area of northern Virginia.
"I feel like most of the kids who don't have credits just didn't step up to the plate in high school," she said. "I consider my area pretty diverse ... but everyone who went to my school had the opportunity to take these courses."
Since she is an engineering major, her course credits from high school, which are mainly in the humanities, are "doing nothing except letting me sign up early," Fini said. "I feel like them taking away our ability to sign up early is basically taking away our only reward."
"There is a certain resentment" toward students in the Echols program, Bloch said. "It's sort of alienating," since the Echols scholars live together and are given special advisers and more personal attention.
