The College Board will introduce new AP courses in cybersecurity and finance starting in the 2025-2026 school year. The new courses, AP Networking Fundamentals and AP Cybersecurity Fundamentals aim to encourage students to pursue careers in these high-demand fields immediately after graduating high school. To support this goal, the College Board will offer certification vouchers, helping students gain industry-recognized credentials.
Like standard AP courses, students will take an end-of-year exam. Those who earn a qualifying score on the cybersecurity exam will receive a free voucher for additional test preparation and the industry-recognized certification exam.
Whitman will offer 30 AP courses for the 2025-2026 school year out of the 40 offered by the College Board, and these yearlong courses conclude with a cumulative exam in May.
Many U.S. colleges and universities award credit for AP exams and typically grant exemptions from entry-level courses to students who score four or five. On its five-point scale, the College Board considers scores of three, four and five to be passing.
Whitman students can also enroll in dual-enrollment courses at Montgomery College, earning college credit for subjects not offered at Whitman. For this reason, Junior Juliette King chose to take Introduction to Business at Montgomery College.
“Whitman didn’t offer any actual business classes, and I wanted to get a jump-start on my future career, which is what this Montgomery College course offered,” King said.
This school year, the College Board launched AP Career Kickstart, a pilot program designed to meet career and technical education (CTE) standards and align with workforce needs in high-growth sectors. Currently implemented at Sonia Sotomayor High School and William H. Taft High School in San Antonio, Texas, the program tailors AP coursework to specific career paths and encourages students to participate in hands-on, work-related activities, helping them gain real-world experience before entering the workforce.
Whitman personal finance teacher Marisa Del Savio believes the new finance courses won’t drastically increase students’ interest in finance-based careers. However, she believes people will want to take advantage of the AP Networking Fundamentals course.
“I think a lot of people will be attracted to it because it’s not particularly a difficult concept to understand,” said Del Savio. “I did look through some of the stuff on there, and it looks like it’s less personal finance and more about the background of business and marketing.”
The College Board also collaborated with Human Resources Research Organization researchers to map SAT scores to job roles in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network Database. This initiative will provide students with career recommendations based on their SAT scores.
In the future, the College Board plans to release additional CTE-aligned courses, including health science. MCPS condenses careers into 11 different clusters, allowing students to take courses that align with their interests and plans for potential future careers. Each cluster features multiple opportunities for students to get involved, including internships and specific courses.
The College Board’s new courses, combined with MCPS’ current CTE program, will allow students to gain an in-depth understanding of potential careers.
