AP Psych - Not really a joke?

<p>Everyone seems to call AP Psych a joke... but is it really? I had this mentality as I was studying and found it to be untrue. The curve is typically like 78% for a 5. In order for it to be a safe and easy 5, you'd need to be able to score a 90% with ease. If you could score 90% with ease, aka no studying, then it'd be a "joke." </p>

<p>I've studied moderately hard (got a high grade in the class and read through barrons 1.5 times) and am scoring 85-90% on the MC. This is much more effort than I thought I would need......... perhaps the people calling the exam a joke were suffering from hindsight bias? how ironic :D</p>

<p>Ahh I liked the hindsight bias.</p>

<p>I heard Barrons are harder. What practice tests are you doing?</p>

<p>take a practice test…or an older released one. review book tests dont really count as an ap psych curve</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure AP Psych’s curve is more around the mid to upper-60 percent. 78% would just be way too abnormally high…</p>

<p>LOL!! Hindsight Bias! Like no joke I was thinking the exact same thing!!! I hope its true though!</p>

<p>Pluto what tests were you scoring 85-90% on? GJ btw</p>

<p>It probably is a joke compared to other AP tests. Some people say a 5 is a walk in the park, but idk.</p>

<p>It’s a joke compared to Calc BC but you can’t say that it’s an absolute cake walk and you can go in without any knowledge and do well.</p>

<p>Guys, check the score calculators. Psych actually is harder than I had previously thought.</p>

<p>^curve seems harsh, but the questions probably arent that difficult in comparison to others.</p>

<p>^questions are def easier</p>

<p>Okay I just did a mini practice test with barons and they had a question about finding the mean of 6 numbers…do they really have problems like that on the real test?! I so hope so!</p>

<p>Harder questions can involve standard deviation… It is the square root of variance right?</p>

<p>^Yeah I think so but how do you find standard deviation?</p>

<p>They ask for standard deviation on a PSYCH test…?</p>

<p>To find SD, find the mean of the numbers, subtract it from every number, square each one, add, divide by n-1, then take square rot.</p>

<p>^Well they talk about it and since you explain how complicated it is to find it I doubt they will ask us to find it but we will have to find the z score using the mean and standard deviation. Anyone know how to do that?</p>

<p>the z score is simply the number of standard of deviations from the mean. </p>

<p>if it’s an IQ normal distribution, mean 100 and SD 15, and you have a score of 145, you’re 3 SD from the mean, thus your z score is 3. </p>

<p>A z score is basically a standardized value to replace the numerical one (145).</p>

<p>AP stats ftw XD</p>

<p>OH OKAY!! Thank you!! I get it now! I missed that question I put +0.67 because I thought it said that somewhere that it can’t be higher than +1 or lower than -1</p>

<p>I’ve never seen Z score or P score mentioned in my class, in my review book, or on any MC or released exams we’ve taken… and the SD on there will be easy. They will tell you the variance and you take the square root. I saw a question, “Test has variance of 100, what is the SD?” It would be 10.</p>

<p>I’ve only taken AP Psych released tests. I took the audit and the 2007. I didn’t do the barrons because… I don’t trust barrons lol. </p>

<p>To be honest, I think psych is harder than Bio. I was able to not study bio at all and get a 5 after doing well in the class. For psych… I got a 72 on the audit which is a solid 4… after taking the class (not much study though). </p>

<p>Hopefully I’m set for a 5 tomorrow! </p>

<p>And @Interficio - I’ve seen p score/z score questions on released exams.</p>