At the start of the 2025-2026 school year, the number of boys and girls taking AP Physics C: Mechanics at North was almost even. However, as classes progressed, a total of nine students dropped out, with six of them being girls.
For the past eight years, 28 to 38 percent of students enrolled in AP Physics have identified as female. This year, while 38 percent of enrollments identify as female, the highest since 2020, 66 percent of class dropouts are female students.
According to Science Department Head Heather Hotchkiss, the largest gender gaps at North appear in higher level math, physics, and engineering classes.
According to senior Anna Tackie, her class had an almost equal number of boys and girls at the beginning of the year. However, she said, “Because most of the people who dropped out were girls, the ratio has significantly gone down.”
Senior Allie Danis said, “I’d say the big reason for girls statistically not performing well is confidence issues. If I didn’t have other girls in my class to sit at my table and to study with and to collaborate in projects with, it would be very hard.”
According to Danis, a boy in her class once criticized her for asking too many questions.
“I think sometimes when I find myself in all male groups, just because of the way it falls in labs, it is very hard to participate or share my ideas,” she added.
To combat this experience among girls in the classroom, many STEM classes are moving toward more collaborative work styles, offering everyone a chance to share and learn.
“We’re trying to have more group-based discussions and group-based work so everyone’s not thinking everything out in their head,” said Hotchkiss. “This is where learning becomes more complicated and you see that stereotype of girls being less confident.”
Regardless of gender, many top students noted that AP Physics is a difficult class, resulting in high dropout rates.
“The course is very fast-paced in order to develop the skills and be able to apply them,” said Hotchkiss. “Students describe a lot that they understand the material, but they really struggle to apply it in the kind of AP-style application questions.”
According to senior Becca Goldberg, the difficulty of AP Physics assessments was an unexpected jump compared to other high level classes at North.
“I think on every test, one of the questions was a new content question,” said Goldberg. “I of course studied for the stuff I thought was going to be on the test, and it threw me off.”
According to Tackie, grade anxiety is another reason why students decide to drop the class.
“Everyone’s really worried about their first term grades, especially for colleges and stuff,” Tackie said.
She added, “Usually the people you see in AP Physics are more high achieving, so they want better grades. They feel like if they take the class and they get bad grades, it’s worse than if they were to have taken honors physics or nothing at all.”
According to Hotchkiss, “AP Physics requires having complete fluency in trigonometry and algebra, and then having to translate that into physics and being able to focus on the physics after that.”
Hotchkiss added that their goal is to ease the transition between freshman and AP-level physics classes. As of this spring, students signed up for AP Physics have the opportunity to attend WINs in order to develop these skills for the following year.
“Our goal for those incoming students is to remove that barrier between the understanding of algebra and trigonometry, making sure students have all the skills they need to do well at the AP level,” said Hotchkiss.
