My daughter just got her AP scores. She has a 2 in AP physics but an A in the class. What does this mean? Has she failed the class. Will the colleges be able to see this score? How important are AP scores on her transcripts. Thank you.
Seems like the AP course was of poor quality if an A student only scores a 2 on the AP test.
She is devastated. They didn’t have a teacher till Nov. A senior was teaching this class till the school hired a new teacher.
She didn’t fail the class, but the score isn’t high enough to count for credit (if a school she goes to gives credit). Depending on where she wants to apply, you don’t have to report the score. Different schools have different rules around that.
The main effects are likely to be:
a. Colleges will think that her high school is of low quality if A students in AP courses score 2 on the AP test.
b. Colleges will not give credit or advanced placement for a score of 2.
Colleges do not see the scores unless she had them sent directly when she took the test. Unless her school requires a 3 or better on the AP exam to pass the class, she has not failed it. At my D’s school the AP scores are not reported on the transcript. She can check with her school to see if those will be on it. I doubt it though. Lastly, there is no reason for her to be devastated. She is not required to report AP scores on her college apps.
Agree with all of the above. I have a question… A senior … student? was teaching the class until November because they had no teacher? Am I understanding this correctly?
Apparently their previous physics teacher left beginning of the academic year and the school could not find anyone so they had senior to teach them.
You didn’t say which AP physics your daughter took. The dirty little “secret” in AP physics 1 and 2 is that they have the lowest scores on the exams. For AP physics 1, 60% of students got a 1 or 2 this year.
^^ @bouders why is that? Is the course poorly taught in general, or does the curriculum not match the test, or is there just a large disparity of ability/facility with physics at this basic level?
All scores (SAT, ACT, AP) are on my school district’s transcripts. Students can request scores be left off (it’s all or none), but in years of reviewing transcripts as part of a scholarship committee, only one student has ever had scores omitted that I can remember.
Physics 1 has a rather low score distribution, while physics 2 does not seem to be unusually low, according to https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2017/Student-Score-Distributions-2017.pdf .
But that may be a selection effect. Probably lots of students take physics 1 because that is the honors option in physics at their high schools. But only those who are stronger and more interested in physics continue on to physics 2.
The selection effect can also be seen in other AP test score distributions, such as calculus BC versus calculus AB versus statistics.
If you look at Trevor Packer’s Twitter feed, you can see the distribution for this year:
The 2018 AP Physics 1 scores: 5: 5.2%; 4: 15%; 3: 19.5%; 2: 29.1%; 1: 31.2%. Students this year were slightly weaker than last year, with fewer 3s, 4s, more 1s.
Further, he tweeted this, which brought to my mind the same questions that @JBFlying asked:
"By far the most difficult question for AP Physics 1 students this year was FRQ5, which required a paragraph of physics reasoning about amplitude of oscillation. 58% of students got 0/7 on it: http://spr.ly/6017DYdsR "
So please tell your daughter to not be too hard on herself. Her grade will mean more to admissions people.
The College Board actually sells high school profiles to colleges. These profiles include how many kids took AP tests and the scores earned. My understanding is that the colleges usually don’t bother. But if it’s a high school the admissions folks aren’t familiar with, they might buy it. They would then see the distribution of results on the test.
My offspring’s old high school puts the distribution of AP scores in each subject on the school profile.
my D had similar situation: 4 teachers in 1 year for AP physics: 1) strong accent, hard to understand 2) recent college grad/sub 3) retired physics teacher - very old 4)?? i forget but someone who was not a strong teacher. She did not take the AP test and recently took physics in college. Hoping you dont have to send that score in to colleges. Not all require scores.
My daughter did poorly on chem this year with an A in the class. First year teacher, zero prep in class for the test, didn’t finish the curriculum, and lots of other APs that daughter prioritized because she knew she was going to retake chem in college because of the poor instruction and wanted to get out of the other courses. In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have bothered taking it all but hindsight is 20-20.
- Most high schools do not report the test scores of AP on a transcript. Check to see if they do. AP tests are optional reporting on the Common App. The problem with "optional" is that if a student took an AP class and does not report the score on the CA, the AO could jump to any conclusion - did the student not take the test or did the student do poorly?
- I believe that the question becomes, how did a kid get an A in a class and receive a 2 (not pass so to speak) the AP exam. What comes into question is - is the grade artificially inflated?
Hopefully she has done well on other AP exams, so not to worry. I assume she is not going into a science field or engineering?
An A in AP chem still looks well on the transcript because it means she is taking the hardest science. But it speaks to a real disconnect between school/teacher and AP Test if she’s scoring a 1 or 2 and receiving an A. My kids’ AP science teachers are really crappy and do hand out A’s to the kids who score terribly on the test. This is a real problem and hurts the school’s credibility w/r/t top colleges. Absent an actual AP test score, how would the college know what that grade even means?
Here’s my take on the disconnect between my daughter’s score and class grade - DD figured out what she need to do to learn the material for the class tests but didn’t have the deeper understanding needed for the AP test. Her class was basically auto tutorial because the teacher couldn’t answer any question, they did almost no labs, and as previously noted, the teacher didn’t finish the syllabus. The school is having another teacher take over the class next year because of how poorly it was taught/number of complaints. DD knew she was ill prepared for the AP but wanted to try it, at very least to see for herself the gap in knowledge.
My daughter made a 3 on AP Chem and had a solid A in the class. There must be a disconnect between the curriculum and the test, at least at my children’s high school. My other two children also made a 3 on the AP Chem test. My children took the high school course with two different teachers. The high school class was not easy.
My older kids both made As in College Chemistry I and II. They both said that the class was easy because they had seen all of the material before. This is why I do not like AP courses. The students work hard all year, and then it boils down to one test to get credit for the entire class. My kids even had to go back to school for 1 1/2- 2 hours each week for the lab because their school had 45 minute class periods, so there was not enough time. To me, dual credit is by far the BEST option.