<p>Well, I am taking AP Biology right now. I have, perhaps, the most dedicated Biology teacher in my high school career. However, I often fall asleep in his class due to his well-known monotonus tone. Nevertheless, he is a great teacher in the sense that he covers a great deal of information in preparation for the AP Biology. </p>
<p>My teacher has high expectations for his fellow students. He expects us to score at least a 4. Everybody in his last year's class passed with a class average of 4.9. He told us that "the last time somebody scored a 3 on the AP Biology Test was twelve years ago." No pressure, right?</p>
<p>Enough background, let focus to the real purpose of the this thread.</p>
<p>In my Biology test, there are two sections, one multiple choice and the other one essay. I wouldn't call the multiple choice section really difficult unless I didn't study DILIGENTLY. What worries me is the essay section. For most cases, I only scored half of the total points available. What made them difficult was that I didn't know what to write and I had only 23 minutes to finish the essay. I fear that I will have the same trouble when I take the AP Biology Test in May. I know I will do fairly well on the multiple choice, scoring at least seventy percents if not more. Just to let you know, I am not good at writing an essay within a limited time. Therefore, I think I will struggle on the Essay part. </p>
<p>To take or not to take the AP Biology Test? That's my dilemma.</p>
<p>Scoring half on the essay and 70% on the multiple choice is easily good enough for a 4, maybe even a 5.</p>
<p>I know somebody who absolutely dominated the multiple choice questions and the first essay, but had no clue on the second one. So he drew a picture of a flower with a rainbow over it and clouds and furry animals and the words "PLEASE GRADE NICELY" underneath it.</p>
<p>Kid got a 5.</p>
<p>^^ That is a joke.</p>
<p>I'm dead serious. The kid is a good friend of mine, took it last year.</p>
<p>Kevdude, that's.... just..... fantastic. I wish I can draw a diagram or something in my test. I think you only get a point for drawing an appropriate picture with correct labelings.</p>
<p>Also note that my teacher doesn't believe in pictures. Some of my classmates attempted to answer questions with drawing. Guess what they got? Three question marks!</p>
<p>I have the opposite problem: really good at essay questions, but average on the MC.
The essay portion is 40% of your overall grade and there's 4 of them, so if you do well on the MC and average on your essays, I think that should be enough to get a 4 or 5.
You said in your initial post that you "only" had 23 minutes to do the essay on your test- I would advise that you practice writing under pressure because you only get about 23 min to do each essay. If the problem is the pressure (and not understanding the Q), you may want to take a couple of minutes to write a brief outline- I find that this really helps organize all the concepts you want to cover in your essay.</p>
<p>Your teacher may be grading the essays harsher than the AP graders, so you could be doing better than you think. Also, when writing essays, try to write as many buzzwords as you can, rather than trying to write down all the details, because they're just scoring from a checklist.</p>