<p>how about…35 on MC. what would your essays have to be?</p>
<p>you’d have to have around a 22 combined essay score. 7-7-7 would do it, too</p>
<p>Yes the multiple choice was strangely simplistic. Only 2 questions truly had me in a state of ambivalence between 2 choices. Nevertheless I’ll assume that all my guesses are incorrect :)</p>
<p>oh and my thoughts on the AP Test</p>
<p>MC: I’m saying 3 wrong, 0 skipped
Essays: 7,6,7</p>
<p>The curve on the MC is going to be harsh because it was ridiculously easy. The essays were manageable but I struggled to effectively answer the second essay.</p>
<p>I suppose my teacher failed to prepare the class, but we did practice throughout the year while simultaneously reading various novels of American literature. It is probable that I am simply not an “English person,” as I thought I was. It is also reasonable to say that I do not perform well on formal exams. I was under the assumption that I would fare well on this exam, as opposed to my European History exam, but I will most likely earn 2’s on both exams.</p>
<p>and BTW for a confidence boost to all of you, our AP class was given real essays provided by CollegeBoard to grade.</p>
<p>On the first essay, (which lacked a thesis and had 2 body paragraphs) - our class gave it a 3, the real score was a 5</p>
<p>On the second essay (which lacked any examples from literature or history and was poorly written) - our class gave it 2, the real score was 6</p>
<p>You are SUPPOSED to take a side with the synthesis essay!! It is essentially an argumentative essay, the only difference being the sources are provided for us…to back up our claims…</p>
<p>Synthesis I argued against, counter arguments are supposed to be mentioned at least briefly in this essay.</p>
<p>Analytical–This one is always my worst one, I have trouble looking at a text and picking out things that stand out and analyzing them…but I dont think I did horribly. This one was actually my longest essay, 3 pages. Others were 2-2.5 I believe. But it IS quality over quantity.</p>
<p>For the argumentative essay I didn’t use examples of specific people…I talked about students who dream of going to a school like Harvard but would never be able to afford it, and how their financial problems cause them to…you know the prompt, aren’t we not supposed to discuss this until 48 hours after the test? I’m afraid lol but whatever, let’s just try not to reveal specifics of the prompt.</p>
<p>That is an amazing morale booster. If what you say is true, I’m positive that I’ve consolidated a 5.</p>
<p>@kjw72292</p>
<p>Perhaps your teacher emphasized literature too much? This is, after all, not a literature course. In our class, other than reading The Great Gatsby in a week, we only read nonfiction essays all year.</p>
<p>Guys. This has happened before. Where a synthesis essay DOESNT ask you to take a side, but rather wants to analyze both sides and their respective importances.</p>
<p>There was nothing to argue against, nothing to argue for.</p>
<p>arsenal, my analysis essay sounds like the first essay you mentioned. i thought i would get a 2 or 3… now that i THINK i MAY have gotten a 5 on that essay, the possibility of 5 on ap english language is lookin goodddddd</p>
<p>^ whew. I feel a lot better now. After reading some of the comments, I found it absurd that I was losing points because I followed the directions they gave lol.</p>
<p>@Ch33psh33p</p>
<p>If I’m not mistaken, there have only been 2 synthesis essays in the past. And I think both of them were argumentative in nature.</p>
<p>From AP Central on CollegeBoard:</p>
<p>“The synthesis question provides students with a number of relatively brief sources on a topic or an issue – texts of no longer than one page, plus at least one source that is a graphic, a visual, a picture, or a cartoon. The prompt calls upon students to write a composition that develops a position on the issue and that synthesizes and incorporates perspectives from at least three of the provided sources. Students may, of course, draw upon whatever they know about the issue as well, but they must make use of at least three of the provided sources to earn an upper-half score.”</p>
<p>Sure, you could present both sides in your argument, but the essay is an argumentative essay at its core.</p>
<p>as a further boost to your morales,</p>
<p>The third essay we read in our AP class to grade had no conclusion, two body paragraphs constructed with poor grammar and simple sentence structure, but it did reason effectively without using specific examples. Our class gave the essay a 3, the real score was a 6</p>
<p>You have to remember that:
- we critique ourselves severely
- the AP readers are trained to read the essays in 30 seconds - 2 minutes and score them
- the kids on this site are usually highly intelligent
- our judgments are not equivalent to those of the AP readers</p>
<p>I’ll just assume that the synthesis was arguable. Sources were extremely biased.</p>
<p>KevRus, you’re missing the point. Read the prompt, or wait for it to be published. It did NOT want you to take a position, becuase there was no position to take. It wanted you to consider the importance of what we have to consider when space traveling.</p>
<p>By the way, I meant the argumentative one in my previous post. Synthesis was newly introduced yes, but this has happened with argumentative before.</p>
<p>^yeah… and even if you don’t specifically state that so and so is the better option than so and so… you should give enough evidence and use the sources to your advantage to show that you are leaning towards one side… i don’t think it’s as argumentative as the defend, challenge, or qualify essay, but it’s still argumentative to an extent.</p>
<p>Yeah I remember last year the synthesis question was over if we should get rid of the penny and it was VERY biased towards keeping it. There were only around 3 documents on why we should get rid of it and they had weak arguments. Personally I think the synthesis essay is a godsend, it probably was the essay I did the best on last year.</p>
<p>@Ch33psh33p</p>
<p>Exactly, that’s an arguable prompt.</p>
<p>The purpose of the synthesis essay is to incorporate the sources into an organized argument, just like DBQs on the History AP exams.</p>
<p>I’m not saying your response has to be something like “RAWR I COMPLETELY DISAGREE,” but you are supposed to present your opinion.</p>
<p>I wrote 3 really good essays, but they were only about two pages long. Would they mark me down for not having long essays?</p>