<p>So the new format of the AP Biology exam for next year 2012-2013 seems interesting o.o 55 Multiple Choice and 9 Free Response Questions (5 of them dealing with Math with Calculator allowed)</p>
<p>Woops I posted in the Math area by mistake ._.</p>
<p>wait not 100 MC? And we aren’t talking about next weeks exam right.</p>
<p>Nope I’m talking about next year</p>
<p>since there will be a new AP Biology curriculum for next school year, will the class be easier since it will take ap teachers time to get use to it?</p>
<p>The new exam for AP BIOLOGY consists of:
63 multiple choicequestions
5 grid-in response questions (similar to SAT Math free response grid-in questions)
8 Free Response Essays</p>
<p>@refath, correction, 6 grid in response questions, and 2 long essays, and 5 short ones, to be more specific. It’s not that bad, what do you think?</p>
<p>63 Multiple-choice and six
Grid in and Two long answers and six short answers</p>
<p>How’d you guys think it was?</p>
<p>I wasn’t a fan.</p>
<p>Can’t say that I was happy with it. Free response wasn’t bad, although I completely misread one of the questions. I think my dissatisfaction with this exam is the fact that I honestly have no idea how I did.</p>
<p>I took this today as well. Going into it, I didn’t think it would be that bad. I took a practice exam (which was in an updated 2013 review book btw) and only missed 18 questions with an hour left to spare. DEFINITELY NOT the case when it came to the real exam. There was a LOT of background information to read and some of the questions were worded REALLY weird in my opinion - I had to read a few of them 2-3 times to find out what they were asking. When my test proctor called time, I still had 3 grid-ins left. My AP Bio teacher said she even had a hard time finishing in 90 minutes on the practice exam.</p>
<p>I also feel there were some major concepts left out in this exam. I think it tested your ability of interpreting data more than it did your knowledge of Biology. Since when did Biology become a statistics class? </p>
<p>As far as the essays go, the long form were pretty okay. I still think the short answers were the easiest part of the whole exam though. I feel like if I DID pass this exam, it will only be because section II saved me. Then again, I’m always overly critical of my work and it is a new exam so NO ONE really knew what they were doing, so I guess there’s still a little hope??</p>
<p>All in all, I can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the format and time restraints on this exam. I think the College Board has to do some tweaking to do to make it a little more realistic as far as time goes, but I doubt they will.</p>
<p>I took it yesterday also and didn’t think that it was too bad. The MC was really easy for me (think ACT science with the answer in the problem) and the grid-ins were all super easy as well. The long essays were harder for me, and the short essays were not too bad. I preferred this year’s format over the previous one. I finished with 20 min to spare in each section, as did many of my classmates, so I think that the timing was reasonable. Some in my class didn’t finish, but they were people who struggled with timing all year.</p>
<p>Honestly I thought that it was pretty tough this year. The multiple choice was extremely weird, but the free response wasn’t so bad. A lot of people from my school were frustrated because studying hard this year for content really didn’t pay off for some people. Frankly, I would have preferred last year’s exam over this year’s. From what I have heard about in previous years, the questions used to be extremely straight forward, but this year it was very different. Also, I heard from a lot of people in previous years that time was practically not an issue at all, whereas I had a lot of friends that struggled to finish this year. I have a feeling though that this year’s curve will be a lot more lenient… even for the practice tests I did in many cases a 65% qualified as a 5.</p>
<p>I definitely think the format of the new AP Bio exam was ridiculous…</p>
<p>Multiple Choice: </p>
<p>It did not feel at all like an AP Biology exam that tested you on knowledge of biology. Yes, Collegeboard wanted to change it into a test that required more than just “memorization”, but the questions barely touched many concepts.</p>
<p>Of course some questions required you to know biology, but it did not test you on the things the teachers have covered throughout the year.</p>
<p>The released practice exam was NOT in any way similar to the actual exam. </p>
<p>I feel like we might as well have taken an “Analytical, Fast-Paced, Reading” class… Probably people outside of AP Bio could have done this test without taking the class/studying as long as they are given a bit extra time to read over the questions.</p>
<p>I was disappointed. I was so ready to breeze through everything, because I have gone into depth in understanding many concepts… But it was mostly on labs, experiments, etc. </p>
<p>The 5 emphasized themes that tied biology together weren’t really present.</p>
<p>Free-Response:</p>
<p>Again, the questions were a bit tougher because it referred to labs, but this is reasonable. It felt this was easier, because I could control how much and what I write. I could easily go into depth about ALL the things I tediously covered throughout this year.</p>
<p>Overall:
If I knew this was going to be the new AP Bio exam, I might as well just have relaxed and not bothered studying whatsoever. </p>
<p>The only thing you need is good practice in analyzing and immediately picking up the concept they are trying to question you on. Not much detail is required to be known.</p>
<p>For example, regular classes teach you 2 letters a year. AP Bio teachers the whole alphabet on the year. You are not required to know all 26 letters and memorize every word in the dictionary.</p>
<p>But when it comes to the “exam”, you should be able to identify the word “mosque” and why it wouldn’t be “mosk” or something.</p>
<p>^confusing, but just a simple analogy.</p>