Being a high school student comes with some complications. With more homework than middle school, students get less sleep every night. Not only that, many students opt to take Advanced Placement classes.

However, in Kaitlyn Little’s psychology class, some students did a study on how AP classes affect students’ sleep.

“We want to learn the difference between correlation, where there’s a relationship between two things, and causation, where one thing causes another,” Little said. “So instead of giving students data that’s been given to them, why don’t we let them find the data that interests them and then let each student use their own data to learn the difference between correlation and causation.”

Psychology students asked 59 students how many AP classes and how much sleep they were getting per night.

The students found that if a student takes at least three AP classes, it was negatively correlated with the amount of sleep that student got per night.

“I think that the most shocking discovery that we made was the fact that there was no correlation between the people that took zero to three AP classes and how much sleep they got,” psychology student Karley Dykes said. “But once we looked at the data for people taking three or more AP classes there was a negative correlation, and they got less sleep.”

The results may not be surprising, as Advanced Placement classes typically require much more time and effort that other classes.

“Workload wise, regular classes follow the Texas TEKS,” counselor Ryan Kiefer said. “AP classes have to follow the standard set forth by College Board so there’s a lot more rigor involved in those courses.”

Lots of freshman come into high school with a lot to handle, even with one AP class.  

“I’ve been sleeping a lot less because I have a lot of homework and also I have to practice and study,” freshman Eunjae Kim said. “Taking AP courses is good for my GPA and it looks good in college.”

While some students take AP classes simply for the academic benefits, others genuinely enjoy the curriculum.

“Obviously I recommend taking AP classes and spending time on AP classes that you enjoy, but if you’re taking AP classes just for the rank or GPA boost, that’s not really a good idea,” senior Sabrina Peng said. “I would actually just rather sleep than take AP classes that I wouldn’t enjoy or wouldn’t be useful to me,”

Experts say teenagers should get 9.5 hours of sleep a day, but for some students, the amount of AP classes they’re taking doesn’t allow that to happen.

“We decided to do this study because it directly affects members of our project group as well as our friends, and we were curious to see if the workload from AP really does cause less sleep for students,” Dykes said. “We think that this will open up the student’s eyes as to how much dedication is needed to participate in and complete these advanced placement courses.”