European Association of AP Schools (EAAPS)

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Dr. Sue Melehani, ASB Founder and President, is a Board Member of the European Association of AP Schools (EAAPS), a pan-European organization established in 2025 to connect schools offering Advanced Placement, promote collaboration among AP educators, and strengthen the recognition of AP qualifications by universities throughout Europe.

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The Association originated in the Czech Republic through an initiative led by Dr. Kateřina Kožnarová of Sunny Canadian International School, in collaboration with the Center for Talented Minds (CTM). Its first Czech-section meeting was held in Prague in November 2025, bringing together representatives from more than 20 schools. The initiative expanded rapidly into a broader European network, culminating in the first Europe-wide European AP Schools Summit at Prague’s historic Strahov Monastery on April 24, 2026. Nearly 200 participants representing schools, universities, ministries, and educational organizations from across Europe participated in the two-day AP & SAT Symposium and EAAPS Summit.

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The Association’s mission extends beyond networking. EAAPS seeks to establish best practices for AP programs, provide professional development for AP teachers and coordinators, support schools introducing Advanced Placement, and engage directly with universities and education ministries to increase understanding and recognition of AP qualifications.

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What Is Advanced Placement?

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The Advanced Placement (AP) Program is a rigorous university-level academic program administered by the College Board. It enables secondary-school students to undertake advanced coursework while still in high school and demonstrate their mastery through standardized examinations administered each May.

The origins of AP date to the years following the Second World War, when American educators began examining ways to create a stronger academic connection between secondary schools and universities.

 

With support from the Ford Foundation, experimental programs were developed in the early 1950s that allowed academically advanced high-school students to undertake college-level work before graduation.

The College Board assumed responsibility for the Advanced Placement Program in 1955. What began as a relatively small American initiative subsequently developed into one of the world’s most established systems of advanced secondary education, with millions of students now participating in AP examinations and courses.

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The defining feature of AP is that its courses are designed to represent college-level academic work undertaken during secondary school. AP examinations are externally standardized and scored on a 1–5 scale, providing universities with an internationally comparable measure of student achievement.

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AP, IB, and A Levels: Three Different Models

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In Europe, AP increasingly exists alongside two other internationally familiar advanced academic pathways: the International Baccalaureate (IB) and British A Levels. All three can provide excellent preparation for university, but their structures are fundamentally different.

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The IB Diploma Programme is a comprehensive two-year program. Students normally study six subjects while also completing the IB core requirements, including Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay, and Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS). Its principal strength is its broad and highly structured curriculum, although students pursuing the full IB Diploma must satisfy the requirements of the entire program.

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A Levels, originating in the United Kingdom, take a more specialized approach. Students generally concentrate intensively on approximately three or four subjects over two years. This provides considerable depth and makes A Levels particularly well suited to students who already have a relatively clear idea of the academic disciplines they intend to pursue at university.

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Advanced Placement offers a third model: flexibility. AP is modular rather than an entire diploma program. A student can take one AP course or several, allowing schools to incorporate university-level courses into their existing high-school curriculum without requiring students to abandon their regular diploma program.

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A student interested in medicine, for example, might choose AP Biology and AP Chemistry. A student considering business or economics might select AP Statistics, AP Calculus, AP Macroeconomics, or AP Microeconomics. Another student might concentrate on AP English, History, Psychology, or other subjects aligned with his or her intended university studies.

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This ability to individualize advanced study according to a student’s strengths and university ambitions is one of AP’s most important advantages.

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Honors, AP, and the GPA Advantage

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Honors and AP courses also serve another important purpose in the American educational system: they allow a student’s transcript to reflect not only how well the student performed, but also the difficulty of the courses the student chose to undertake.

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A traditional unweighted American GPA is generally calculated on a 4.0 scale, with an A carrying 4 points, a B 3 points, a C 2 points, and so forth. Many American schools, including ASB, also calculate a weighted GPA, under which additional points are assigned to academically more demanding courses.

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At ASB, Honors courses receive an additional 0.5 GPA points, while AP courses receive an additional 1.5 GPA points. Therefore, two students earning the same letter grade may receive different weighted GPA values if one completed a substantially more demanding course.

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For example, an A in a regular course ordinarily contributes 4.0 points to the GPA calculation. Under ASB’s weighting system, an A in an Honors course contributes 4.5 points, while an A in an AP course contributes 5.5 points.

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This is why a strong student can legitimately graduate with a weighted GPA above 4.0. The higher figure does not mean that the grading scale itself has changed. It indicates that the student earned strong grades while deliberately undertaking courses of greater academic difficulty.

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Universities reviewing American-style transcripts generally consider both academic performance and course rigor. Honors and AP courses can therefore demonstrate that a student deliberately challenged himself or herself with more demanding academic work.

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The Growth of AP in Europe

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Although Advanced Placement originated in the United States, its international presence has grown considerably. Europe is now an important part of that expansion, particularly among American, international, bilingual, independent, and increasingly national schools seeking additional advanced academic opportunities for their students.

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The growth is significant enough that the College Board and European AP educators are placing increasing emphasis on university recognition. The 2026 Prague gathering brought together nearly 200 delegates from ministries, universities, and AP schools across 19 European Union countries, against a background of continued growth in AP participation and the addition of new European AP schools.

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The exact number of European schools offering AP changes continuously as schools add courses and enter the College Board’s AP Course Ledger. Similarly, the number of European universities recognizing AP continues to evolve. For this reason, current recognition is better understood as a rapidly expanding network rather than a fixed statistic.

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This is also one of the reasons organizations such as EAAPS have become increasingly important.

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Building a European AP Community

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As a member of the EAAPS Board, Dr. Sue Melehani will participate in the Association’s initiatives to help AP schools collaborate on matters involving AP subjects, program development, teacher preparation, and implementation.

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An equally important component of this work is helping to expand awareness of Advanced Placement among European universities.

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While European admissions offices are generally very familiar with national qualifications, the IB Diploma, and A Levels, familiarity with AP can vary significantly among countries and universities. One of the Association’s priorities is therefore to engage with higher-education institutions, explain the academic rigor and standardized assessment involved in AP, and encourage universities to establish transparent policies for applicants presenting AP courses and examination results.

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This effort is particularly important as European secondary education becomes increasingly international. Students may attend an American or international high school in one European country and subsequently apply to universities in several others.

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AP provides these students with a standardized, externally assessed means of demonstrating that they have successfully undertaken university-level academic work before completing high school.

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European Collaboration Beginning in September

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Beginning in September 2026, EAAPS members will participate in a series of collaborative sessions designed to turn the Association’s European network into a practical professional resource for schools.

Sessions will include training and knowledge sharing among Advanced Placement coordinators from different European schools, providing opportunities to exchange experience concerning program administration, College Board requirements, examinations, student preparation, course development, university recognition, and successful approaches to implementing AP programs.

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Separate subject-specific collaboration sessions for AP teachers are also planned. These will allow teachers of subjects such as AP Biology, Chemistry, English, Psychology, Statistics, Mathematics, History, and other AP disciplines to communicate directly with colleagues teaching the same courses at other European schools.

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This is particularly valuable for smaller international schools, where there may be only one teacher responsible for a particular AP subject. Through European collaboration, that teacher gains access to a much larger professional community of educators teaching the same curriculum and preparing students for the same external examination.

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AP at ASB: Eleven Years of Advanced Academic Opportunities

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While ASB’s authorization as an AP testing center represents an important new development, Advanced Placement itself is not new to the American School of Bulgaria.

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ASB has offered students access to AP coursework since the school’s inception 11 years ago, as part of its commitment to providing an American educational pathway capable of preparing students for competitive universities internationally.

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Over the years, ASB students have used these advanced academic opportunities as part of successful applications to highly regarded universities in Europe and North America. Previous student destinations include McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, including its Law School; and, most recently, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, to name just a few.

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In summer 2026, ASB further strengthened its Advanced Placement program by providing several teachers with the time and opportunity to participate in intensive, weeklong, subject-specific professional development offered through the College Board. ASB teachers completed specialized training across a diverse range of AP disciplines, including Human Geography, Chemistry, Mathematics, and English. These programs provided teachers with in-depth preparation in AP curriculum requirements, instructional approaches, assessment standards, and examination expectations, while also creating opportunities to collaborate with other AP educators. This specialized professional development further strengthens ASB’s capacity to deliver rigorous, College Board-aligned AP instruction and to prepare students effectively for the demands of university-level coursework and AP examinations.

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AP courses have traditionally been available as an additional academic option. Families interested in additional AP coursework can consult the ASB website for current tuition, fees, and program information, as these may change from one academic year to another.

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A New Honors and AP Structure for 2026–2027

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Beginning with the 2026–2027 academic year, ASB is expanding advanced academic opportunities across the upper grades.

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Students in Grades 9 and 10 will have access to Honors courses. These courses cover secondary-level subject matter at greater depth, intensity, and academic rigor than regular courses and receive the additional 0.5 GPA weighting described above.

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For Grades 11 and 12, the progression moves to university-level Advanced Placement study. ASB will provide ambitious and academically serious students with the opportunity to complete one AP course as part of their program at no additional tuition cost.

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Students who are capable of handling an even greater academic challenge may elect to complete an additional AP course independently, allowing particularly motivated students to build an even stronger advanced academic profile.

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From AP Courses to AP Examinations at ASB

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The major development for 2026 is that ASB has now become an authorized AP testing center.

Previously, ASB students could complete AP coursework through the school but needed to make arrangements to sit their official College Board examinations at an external testing center. Beginning with the new program, ASB students will be able to progress from AP study to the official examination through their own school.

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Students in Grades 11 and 12 participating in the program will study university-level material throughout the 2026–2027 academic year and will have the opportunity to sit the corresponding official AP examination in May 2027.

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Students will be given the opportunity to choose their preferred AP courses at the end of August 2026. In making their selections, students should consider their academic strengths, intended university programs, future career interests, existing workload, and readiness to undertake substantially more demanding university-level academic work.

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The purpose is not simply to accumulate additional GPA points. Honors and AP designations should represent genuine academic rigor. The additional GPA weighting recognizes that a student earning a strong grade in an advanced course has successfully completed work that is more demanding than the standard curriculum.

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LEAP: Extending the Pathway Beyond High School

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ASB's Advanced Placement program is also part of a broader academic initiative: LEAP — Learning & Empowerment for Academic Pathways.

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LEAP was developed to provide students with academic pathways that can extend beyond the traditional boundaries of secondary school. Through LEAP, students can pursue advanced coursework, university preparation, academic advising, and individually designed pathways based on their intended field of study and university destination.

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For students who wish to continue their AP journey after graduating from ASB, LEAP can provide an additional one- to two-year pathway during which students may continue taking AP courses and other university-level subjects that strengthen their academic preparation and help pave the way toward admission to their chosen universities. This can be particularly valuable for students who need additional advanced subjects, specific prerequisite courses, stronger preparation in a particular academic area, or additional time to build a competitive university application.

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Rather than viewing high-school graduation as the end of the academic pathway, LEAP allows students to build an individualized bridge between their ASB diploma and university entrance.

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Students and families who would like to learn more about continuing their academic pathway after graduation can explore the ASB LEAP Initiative. Those interested in learning more about university options, pathways, and opportunities should also visit ASB's Universities and Pathways page for additional information.

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A Continuous Pathway: Honors → AP → LEAP → University

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Together, these programs create a progressive academic pathway for ambitious ASB students.

In Grades 9 and 10, students can begin challenging themselves through Honors coursework. In Grades 11 and 12, academically prepared students can progress to university-level AP courses and official College Board examinations. Following graduation, students who need or desire further preparation can continue through LEAP for an additional one or two years, taking advanced and university-level courses appropriate to their intended university pathway.

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The objective is not to require every student to follow the same route. It is precisely the opposite: to provide students with multiple levels of academic challenge and multiple routes to university, allowing the pathway to be adapted to the student’s abilities, ambitions, intended degree, and destination country.

At the same time, ASB’s participation in the European Association of AP Schools places the school within a much wider European initiative. Through Dr. Sue Melehani’s service on the Association’s Board, ASB will participate not only as an AP school, but also in the broader effort to strengthen collaboration among European AP educators, expand professional opportunities for AP teachers and coordinators, support the development of new AP programs, and increase recognition of Advanced Placement among universities throughout Europe.

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From its beginnings in the United States in 1955 to a rapidly expanding community of schools across Europe today, Advanced Placement has increasingly become an international pathway to higher education. ASB has been part of that journey for 11 years. In 2026–2027, with Honors courses, expanded access to AP, its new status as an authorized AP testing center, and the continued development of LEAP, ASB is extending that pathway from the early years of high school all the way to university entrance.