By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-12 21:06:04 | Updated at 2026-08-12 22:57:54
2 hours ago
An elite Bay Area high school has capped the number of advanced courses a student can take in the name of mental health — but some students opposed to the idea say the idea has only stressed them out even more.
School officials cited extreme stress at the prestigious school district, with students vomiting before high-pressure exams, one teacher told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s very intense here,” said Laura Gan, a district substitute teacher who has proctored AP exams. “I don’t want my kids to be part of that race.”
Dublin Unified School District kicked off a cap, starting this week, of four Advanced Placement or honors courses per year and 11 over the course of high school, with limited exceptions.
The goal: to reduce college admission anxiety, as students sometimes bit off more than they could chew with numerous AP classes to pad their applications.
“The board was interested in slowing down this race to try to get as many APs as possible, it was the right time to do it,” former superintendent Chris Funk, who pushed for the cap, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Whether it’s the system itself that puts that pressure on them, their families or themselves or their peers, it blinds the actual goal of education and to be as well rounded as possible,” he said.
Many families are driven by the belief that more advanced courses translates to higher chances of entering into a top university, educators said.
Students in the district told outlets that the cap would hurt them.
“The policy makes us worse off and less appealing toward those colleges because their academic record and the rigor in other high schools is higher than us. I think it’s really a disadvantage,” student Ian Chung told CBS News.
Counselors claim that’s not necessarily the case, as colleges will often consider academic restrictions such as a cap on AP courses when evaluating applications.
Still, other high schoolers said such a cap doesn’t necessarily reduce the underlying causes of the mental pressure, citing parents who push too hard or cutthroat classmates competing for limited spots at top colleges.
“There definitely is some pressure from all aspects of your life, like your parents, you see online, kids are getting into these good schools. You want to do that too. There’s pressure, but I feel like everyone should know what their limit is,” student Aadi Chawla said to CBS.
Students can appeal the cap, and Funk said he already had 20 cases before he left his position in June.
The Dublin district is the first in the region to test this policy out for a school that has high graduation rates and above-average testing scores.
The debate over increasing or decreasing academic rigor comes amid a broader shakeup over the use of standardized tests.
More than 3,000 University of California faculty members are urging the system to reinstate SAT and ACT requirements, arguing that the current test-blind policy has led to significant preparation gaps.
