<p>i feel so stupid, i'm not sure if i remembered to put "dt" at the end of my integrals</p>
<p>i REALLY hope the curve in 2003 is the same this year
slightly lower!</p>
<p>ah the cursed dt, we hadn't done that like all year but our teacher stressed that right before the test before she had to leave. so i'm SURE i got that (its about the only thing i'm sure of now lol)</p>
<p>wow i thought i was gonna be the only one who messed this exam up..so basically i thought the mcqs were pretty simple, i think i skipped 5-7 in all, but after question 4 on the FR question i got screwed i lost track of time and i didnt know anythin!..but i still managed to answer two parts of each...wow that was hard..so im guessing the curve for this year might be amazing..hoping for a 4!</p>
<p>just...wow. why did they do that to us? it seems unethical. :-)</p>
<p>Eravial08, i'm in the exact same position as you. i was super optimistic about getting a 5 for sure on calc. i omitted 3 and randomly guessed on 3 on the no calc MC, answered all the calc MC, and the free response was mostly awkward...</p>
<p>oh well. i guess everybody in the nation feels the same way? lol</p>
<p>so I took the Calculus AB exam, and it was a beast. The MC were pretty much straightforward, I took care to only answer the questions I definitely knew, and skipped the ones I didn't. overall, I skipped a total of 8 questions. I went back over my performance last night, and came to this conclusion:</p>
<p>out of 45 questions, skipped 8:
37/45
prob'ly got about 7 wrong:
30/45
* .25 for each question I got wrong:
28/45</p>
<p>28 * 1.2 = 33.6</p>
<p>A word about the free response: wow...what was the CB thinking when they constructed THAT? that was definitely NOT in line with the questions from previous years. I studied the tests from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and that was definitely one of the hardest FR sections i've yet seen. I actually found myself wondering whether or not I deserve to take Calc 3 next semester</p>
<p>FR: 20/54 haha...wow</p>
<p>Total Score: 53.6</p>
<p>I really really really NEED a 4...god give me a gracious curve...</p>
<p>I feel relieved after reading this.. lol I thought I screwed up really bad on the FR.. I know it was way harder than what we practiced.. I felt pretty good about the MC.. was going in for a 4 or 5.. Hope i get a 3-4 now.</p>
<p>A couple of common misconceptions are going through this thread, and I wanted to take a moment to correct a few of them.</p>
<p>First of all, the AP Calculus curve numbers are only released for the years where the entire exam was released. The most recent exam that was released in its entirety was the 2003 Exam, where the cut score for a 5 was a 66. Any other cut scores are complete speculation, unless you happen to know the right kinds of people (like the Chief Reader), and I don't know that this information would be shared.</p>
<p>Secondly, the cut scores are determined based on information from the multiple choice questions. In essence, there were 6 multiple choice questions that appeared on the 2007 edition of the test that also appeared on the 2006 edition of the test. They use these numbers to determine the curve each year, with the idea that students who got 6/6 of those questions correct in 2006 would earn the same score again in 2007 with a different set of questions, that students who got 5/6 of those questions correct in 2006 would earn the same score again in 2007, and so on and so forth.</p>
<p>However, what's not guaranteed is the percentage of students who will earn a 5. While many years, the number of students who gain a 5 is over 20%, it's not guaranteed that this will always hold true. While 22.3% of all students earned a 5 on the exam in 2006, only 20.7% earned a 5 on the exam in 2005, and the "incredibly easy" 2003 exam that people speak of only had 18.5% of all students earning a 5.</p>
<p>The students that I had last year came out of the test thinking it was easy, and the students that I've had this year came out of test thinking it was hard. Was it hard? You've got approximately 100-plus opinions thinking it was, and the College Board will surely compensate to some degree for it.</p>
<p>But maybe not as much as everybody's hoping, and those of you who were leaving lots of questions blank, you probably have the most to worry about.</p>
<p>For instance, those of you who have taken the mock exams in class probably have a pretty good idea of how they score many of these types of questions. If there is a question asking you to justify an absolute minimum or maximum, then you're going to often see a point for setting the derivative equal to zero, a point for finding critical values, and a point for checking the endpoints and coming to a conclusion.</p>
<p>So that person out there who out of desperation took the derivative of the function (and perhaps set it equal to zero) very well might have earned that desperation point, and with 15 or so points being the separation between a 4 and a 5, earning that desperation point might very well be the difference.</p>
<p>Will they go down to the 50's for a 5? I doubt it. Will they go up into the 70's? Probably not. If a sample size of 100 is representative of a nationwide trend, it wouldn't surprise me to see the 5 cut score dip into the lower 60's.</p>
<p>But the truth is, we'll never know this particular cut score, and the grades are already there, they just have to be recorded.</p>
<p>So while it's good and a little healthy to get some of this out, it's also going to be good for all of you in the long run to recognize that what's done is done, and enjoy the rest of your school year and not let this get you down. What you've got is the performance on one test, on one day, and in one subject, and even if it hurts your admission record a little, the vast majority of you will go on to college and find success. Take comfort in that.</p>
<p>@TheMathProf That was the most informative post I have ever seen on this forum. Kudos to you.</p>
<p>Hooray for smart posts!</p>
<p>Do us all a favor TheMathProf and when CollegeBoard releases the FRQs, tell us if you think they were hard or if this year's test-takers aren't too bright...</p>
<p>And I'm not sure why people would skip on the FRQ. I always tried to put something down (even if it was painfully, painfully wrong)...</p>
<p>-The Math Coot66</p>
<p>That means they set the curve based on our mcq scores?</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>I'll ask my teacher today. He's been to one of their grading sessions before.</p>
<p>nice post themathprof</p>
<p>Great post Mathprof, gracias.</p>
<p>First post here. This was my first ap test, not a very fun experience but not killer either. The MC was easy, didn't skip any and was pretty confident in pretty much all of them. Of course the FRQ was killer, I don't know if I got any answer right, although I'm pretty sure that my procedure was correct except for one which I had no clue. I didn't juggle the time well, oops, leaving me with very little time for the last question of the FR Calc portion. While I was trying to go to sleep yesterday night I figured out how to do the one I was clueless on, and I was so angry because it really was obvious. Oh well. </p>
<p>My calc teacher kept saying that the FR was the place to rack up points if we bombed the MC. I think this time it's opposite.</p>
<p>I'm still confused ^^;; ... They use the repeated MC questions to determine the curve ... so does that mean they look at the combined MC&FRQ score of those ppl that got 6/6 repeated MC correct, and then the combined score of those that got 5/6 correct, etc. in order to determine the curve?</p>
<p>How exactly they use the six repeated questions, I don't know, so what follows is speculation, but this is how I imagine they would use the multiple choice to create a curve.</p>
<p>Also, it should be noted that the numbers given below are fictitious and are used to illustrate my speculation, and are not actual numbers based in reality.</p>
<p>Suppose on the 2006 AP Calculus Exam, the following numbers represented the percentage of students answering the given number of multiple choice questions correctly in order to earn a 5 at the cut scores that were eventually decided:</p>
<h2>2006 AP Exam (% of 5's based on repeat multiple choice questions)</h2>
<p>6/6 42%
5/6 31%
4/6 24%
3/6 15%
2/6 8%
1/6 4%
0/6 0.2%</p>
<p>[Note that these numbers don't add up to 100% intentionally and shouldn't necessarily do so. This is claiming that 42% of the students who scored 6/6 on those multiple choice questions earned a 5, not that 42% of the students who earned a 5 scored 6/6 on those multiple choice questions.]</p>
<p>Now suppose that they are examining different cut scores for what was required for a 5, and they determined that the following would be the percentages of students who would earn a 5, if students earned 66 of the possible 108 points (including both multiple choice and free response):</p>
<h2>2007 Proposed Cut Score of 66</h2>
<p>6/6 24%
5/6 17%
4/6 13%
3/6 8%
2/6 2%
1/6 0.8%
0/6 0.001%</p>
<p>Then they would recognize that the proposed cut score of 66 is too high in order to be consistent with the results from the year before, and that the cut score should be lowered.</p>
<p>In other words, my guess is that the AP would do some kind of approximate score matching. If 42% of the population who scored 6/6 last year on the multiple choice earned a 5, then I would expect that approximately 42% of the population who scored 6/6 on the multiple choice would also earn 5's.</p>
<p>What would make this more complicated is if the percentages don't happen to synchronize with one another. For instance, what they might decide upon might have a pattern such as this:</p>
<p>6/6 41%
5/6 32%
4/6 25%
3/6 12%
2/6 7%
1/6 5%
0/6 1%</p>
<p>Notice that some of these numbers are higher than their 2006 counterparts, while other numbers are lower, but most of the numbers are generally close and within a percentage point or two. (The largest disparity for this one, for instance, was the three percentage points of students who scored 3/6 and earned a 5.)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that this is all completely speculation using fictitious numbers as an example, but this is how I would imagine the college board would use those multiple choice questions in order to help determine a curve using the score generated by the free response questions and remaining multiple choice.</p>
<p>man, that was my first AP test ever... I was so happy and so confident after the 2003 test (I got a five on that one, in case colleges care). Even the multiple choice was pretty easy, I thought - I didn't leave any blank on the calculator section. My teacher made us do the free response questions from 2002 to 2006, plus we've done 1 frq every week since October. I thought it would be similar, BUT the CB ended up messing with our minds and giving us the hardest free response ever created (of which I answered parts of 4 questions, and 2 almost fully).
On the bright side, there HAS to be a better curve this year - they can't just give everyone 4's - the % of ppl with 5's has to be at least >15%, and they can only do that by lowering the standards for curving</p>
<p>At least I know it wasn't just me, and the curve will be up</p>
<p>Note: When we finished the test, one kid asked if anyone had a razorblade. It sucked</p>
<p>Oh come on guys.. it wasn't bad at all. The FR questions were fun, not hard. The only rough patch in the FR was some on the non calculator stuff could have definitely used a calculator. But even if you were too lazy to multiply stuff that needed multiplying and such you would have only lost a point or 2 for having no answer. (If you set it up correctly)</p>
<p>And like everyone else was saying, the MC was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy easy. I skipped 2 no calc MC, and I think I got the rest correct except for this one stupid one that I should have omitted but didnt.</p>
<p>hmmm as a student of a teacher who has taught AP Calc for a long time (not sure how long, sorry) and has only had one student receive a four during her whole career, i would say the test was extremely easy. almost everyone in my class would concur. without any exaggeration, i waited 20 minutes for the NC MC to end, 30 min for the C MC to end, and a total of at least 30 min during the FR section. My only bump was on the third FR question but i still think i did decent on it.</p>
<p>MC was laughable, but questions 3&6 on Form B were definitely a little off. not necessarily bad, but diff from previous AP's. and the differential equation question had nvr before been like that</p>