I crammed this in eight hours the day before the test and started without even knowing what a binomial distribution was.). Science, Psychology, Comp Sci A, Statistics, Biology, English Language) in two weeks. Last year, I crammed seven AP tests (Calc BC, Env. On BC, about 40% of students got a 5 (which I would explain by students being much more selective in deciding to take BC). If you look at Calculus (in 2008), the scores were split roughly uniformly on the AB test, such that about 20% of students got a 5. In that view, a better question to ask is sometimes "what percentage of students get a 5 on the AP X test?". (I'm sure the percentages vary widely across classes and schools.) Many of my hard science courses in the course of my undergraduate degree had average marks on exams in the 60% range, with the grades curved such that about 30% of the class would get an A, 40% a B, and so on. The 90% is generally after adjustment, and with taking into account lots of "effort" points which are generally viewed by professors and students as mostly free. I do remember that I got a year and a half's worth of credits out of it (which is the other benefit of taking lots of different tests), and so had almost all of my 'core credits' out of the way when I stepped onto campus.Ĭonspicuously, these percentages are all well below the standard 90% needed for the top mark (A) in a high school or college course. I don't remember exactly how many AP tests I took, or what I got on them- the number 13 seems to be available, and I remember getting mostly 4s and 5s. Because of how low the 5 rate is even with a low cutoff rate means those students contain a comprehenvise understanding of the material even if they are scoring barely above a 64%. I realize that I am very bias in wanting these tests to be comphrensive for my own benefit but I stronly believe in history and perhaps other subjects a 5 is acceptable even with these low cut-off rates. I believe the reason for this low five rate is how comprhensive the test is in measusring the learning a students incurs throughout the year. In WHAP for example you cite the cut-off rate as 64% however, only 6.5% of students acheive this cutoff. In addition having low test cut-offs don't necessarily correlate to a high percentage of studnets actually receving a 5. These questions require a significant amount of background knowledge to answer comprehensivly. In World History we are required to write a DBQ (Document Based Question), LAQ (Long answer Question), as well as a slew of SAQ (Short Answer Questions). For some subjects such as World History or Human Geography the test is very comprhensive and teachers have no contention with teaching to the test. I write this as a current highschool studnet enrolled in 6 ap classes. If I were designing the curriculum, I think that I would pare down that portion of the course so that students got a more gentle introduction. My impression is that most students who get 5's on AP Calculus BC really don't understand the topic. The case of sequences and series is interesting. For example in the calculus case, sequences and series are one of the last things taught, and they are substantially more abstract and are simply easier to teach when students have had more hands on experience with what calculus can do. Having them get a few tastes of more advanced material in a variety of subjects is therefore good.Ī possible concern is that what people learn might be too superficial for them to get even a "taste."Īlso, at a practical level, actually getting kids at that point to have an in depth understanding of subjects is often difficult. Still, doesn't 63% for calculus seem low? I think that if you know all of the material like the back of your hand, you can get 85+% right even with mistakes.Īt the highschool level most kids have little idea what they enjoy or are genuinely talented at. People under time pressure or stress make a lot of mistakes often. I don't think percentages in this sort of context are a good metric. Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism: 59%.English Literature and Composition: 76%.The percentages needed to get a 5 are as follows: The College Board gives the raw score to AP score conversions for the exams that have been most recently released. ![]() ![]() I was very surprised that I scored a 5 (the top mark), because at the time when I took the exam, I didn't know some very basic things that were on the syllabus. ![]() When I was in high school, I noticed is that it was possible to score the top mark on an Advanced Placement (AP) Exam by answering a relatively small portion of the questions correctly.ĭuring my junior year, I self-studied calculus, and took the AP Calculus AB exam.
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