<p>Well you have to take the test at the end of the course. Like in SC we have EOCEPS in Physical Science, Algebra I, Biology, English I, and US History. EOCEPs are newer, established by SC’s Educational Accountability Act in 1998. yeah, we have a lot fewer tests, but I don’t like testing. haha. but it can improve your grade. haha We also have a different way of determining GPAs.</p>
<p>@314159265: It seems that if the DBQ was on a topic that has never really been done on a DBQ in the past, it would not have a NORMAL curve…</p>
<p>^I would go out on a limb (not really :P) and guess that the test writers try to create essay questions on topics that have never been DBQ’s or FRQ’s in the past. The only viable reason essays would be graded more harshly would be that there was an influx (if you will) of really good essays. Conversely, if the essays for a particular question really sucked, I’m sure we can extrapolate that that particular essay will be graded more leniently.</p>
<p>Also, DBQ 2008 (<a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board) was on Vietnam, which overlapped significantly with DBQ 2011.</p>
<p>So essays are graded on a bell curve?</p>
<p>And haha, I love how you guys started using quotes after I introduced it a couple weeks ago :D.</p>
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You’d be surprised how similar the rubrics are year to year on these essays. There is, in fact, a normal curve, and it is very lenient on what you can do wrong and still get in the 5-7 range. As long as you have a good amount of detail and outside information on the DBQ, even with a few factual errors, you can get a 7.
The graders were told that it would be harsh before they even started, so I don’t think it was based on everyone who took the test. They probably took a relatively small random sample of essay responses and looked at them to determine how they would grade it for everyone else. I know that this is how they determine what raw score converts to a 1-5.
What? I’ve known how to use the
[quote]
tag for years. There are other bbcode tags that work on this forum.</p>
<p>EDIT: The list of them doesn’t belong in this topic. I’m going to make a new topic somewhere else for that.</p>
<p>EDIT2: Here it is:
[List</a> of BBcode tags](<a href=“BB Code - College Confidential Community - College Confidential Forums”>BB Code - College Confidential Community - College Confidential Forums)</p>
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<p>Huh? I’ve been quoting for a long, long time now. Clicking “Go Advanced” next to “Post Quick Reply” takes you to a screen where you can click “BB Code” at the bottom. This takes you to a list of all BB codes. Sorry to burst your bubble, but quoting’s been going on way before you joined this forum.</p>
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<p>Yeah, it’s my understanding that the leaders arrive a few days before the other graders to discuss the scoring guidelines. I wonder, though, if the test writers anticipated the giant disparity in kids choosing 2 over 3 and 5 over 4.</p>
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<p>Well, the Chief Reader doesn’t set the cutoff until the very end of the reading session, so maybe the Chief gets an idea of all essays before setting the curve?</p>
<p>ok, wth. Since WHEN has there EVER been a curve on the ESSAY PORTION. I really don’t care, unintentional or not. If I get a lower score simply because I picked one essay over another, collegeboard WILL be receiving a call from me. It shouldn’t matter how many “outstanding” essays there were, a 6 is a 6 and a 9 is a 9.</p>
<p>^The problem is, you won’t know if you got a lower score for choosing one essay over another.</p>
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Again, curve might have been bad wording. I should have said grading criteria, not curve.
Second, it is very likely that some people will get lower scores because of their essay choice on any test, any year. If you think you know more than you actually do on a subject, and choose that over another subject that you would be able to do better on, you might get a lower score. I did this - I personally probably would have written 4 better than 5, and I realized this in the middle of writing 5, when there were about 15 minutes left.
Third, I don’t know how essay 4 was graded, so unless an AP grader or student of an AP grader who was on 4 comes forward with information, we can’t really say that 5 was graded harsher than 4.
Fourth, you won’t know what your essay score is, won’t know what your raw score is, and can’t possibly know what your essay score if you chose 4 would have been. Remember that each point on an essay (other than the DBQ) is only worth 2.75 raw points. I purposely sacrificed effort on 5 to make my DBQ (worth 4.5 raw points per essay point) better, so I don’t expect my essay 5 to have a high score, but I’ll never know.</p>
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I don’t really know the nuances of the grading process. What I posted about how they decided the grading criteria was an educated guess based on what my teacher told me, not a definite fact. The rubric is definitely written up before the graders meet, obviously, and the grading criteria was definitely set before they started. I also thought (wrongly, apparently) that the conversion from raw to 1-5 was done before the graders met. Based on this, I guessed that the CB staff met before the grading and read a random sample of essays, and decided the criteria based on that.
I’m definitely getting 2 and 3 mixed up in my head. I think my teacher told me more people chose 3, but I could be wrong.
I’m sure the writers expected the disparity of 5 over 4, though. It’s civil rights vs immigration, and most people know (or at least think they know) civil rights much better than immigration, especially immigration between 1840 and 1850.
If 3 is the one that more people chose, that also isn’t surprising. The slavery question had an extremely broad time period, and most people don’t learn the origins and development of slavery in US History. Comparatively, the pol. parties question had a narrow time period and is a subject that is covered in almost every course, plus some people know something about it before taking the course.
The test writers are smart enough to realize that the questions they write steer people in a certain direction.</p>
<p>I smell a lawsuit!</p>
<p>^^Here’s the link to the FRQ’s if you want to reference it while reading my post: <a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;
<p>That’s a very interesting take on why political parties (#3) would be chosen more than slavery (#2). While it’s true that the political party question spanned a much smaller time period, it covers 1790-1840, a period about which I doubt many APUSH students would have background knowledge. It starts around Jefferson and ends a bit after Jackson, a period that’s known in APUSH for the difference between Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, not for the development of political parties.</p>
<p>Conversely, essay #2’s broad time period allows for students not well-versed in slavery’s origins to write about the development of slavery leading up to 1776, something that fits the mold of common knowledge much better. After all, who doesn’t know about slaves being brought to the South and plantations and such?</p>
<p>And, for what it’s worth, I saw pink FR booklets being stacked at my table. Of the 70ish booklets I saw (we had about 100 students take the test), I counted a good 50 or so booklets that chose 2 and 5 (including my own), the slavery and African-American questions. Our school’s APUSH teacher isn’t particularly strong (nor are the large majority of students), so I would think that the choice of questions nationally could be extrapolated (albeit quite riskily) from the phenomenon at my school, which would be a overwhelming group favoring 2 and 5.</p>
<p>You could be right. I think he did say that people were getting the origins of slavery mixed up with the civil rights movement, so that would seem to suggest that it was the #2 question that had the skew.
You are right, though. The essay choice is much more about what people think they know than what they actually know. What I posted might be my personal bias from my APUSH class - we covered political parties much more extensively than we covered the origins of slavery, and so I knew a good amount about them. This is because slavery is covered extensively in my school’s AP World History course, which is taken the year before APUSH. APUSH assumes that we know about the origins of slavery, so it is only lightly covered (as in, put in US History perspective rather than World History perspective) and only in the beginning of the year.</p>
<p>The strangest part of this is that when I left the test, I left with 3 of my friends. Each of us did a different combination of essays, so I thought that it would be close to 50-50 on all of them. I know that 4 people is not really a large enough sample size (especially considering their personalities), but it did take me by surprise to find out that both essays were so skewed.</p>
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No. A thread on an online forum is not enough evidence to sue off of. To do that, you’d need a few things:
- Your raw score, and it would have to be within a small number of points of the next grade level.
- Proof of damages - how does a score one point lower hurt you financially? Sure, some colleges might not accept it for credit, but does one class worth of credit really hurt you? And even if it does, this is only potential future harm, not definite harm. I’m not a lawyer, and don’t intend to ever become one, but I don’t think this is grounds for a lawsuit. Either way, you would almost certainly have to have a 2, and be within 2.75 points of a 3, to have any chance.
- Proof that CB is actually liable for those damages - Unless you can prove that you would have done better writing the #4 essay, and that this is because of the criteria of the #5 essay compared to the #4 essay, it’s unlikely that you could win. Also, how do you know it’s not just your grader’s personal bias? There’s no way to know, and I don’t think the CB even can identify which grader graded which essay.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can get any one of the above 3 things, let alone all 3.</p>
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<p>There were only 4 possible essay combinations. Weird.</p>
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<p>Holy Jesus, how the hell does that even happen?</p>
<p>@Dogod11: I think he was kidding about the lawsuit. IMO</p>
<p>@Dogod- I know I won’t know my raw score but I think most people can get a feel of what they’ll get after they take a test. So, if my scores a lot lower than what I expected I’ll be ****ed. I didn’t do the slavery one though. I’m just worried because I did the african America leaders. But most of our class did do the slavery one because our teacher predicted that EXACT question would be on there (he was off by about a year or two in the range they provided). It was really creepy lol.</p>
<p>@Everyone: Just how is the DBQ scored? In my APUSH class, our teacher reads our entire essay (duh), then draw a line where he feels your thesis, document usage, support, and overall essay is. Ex. Strong thesis = 7-9 range, Used all or all but one Document = 8-9 range, Outside Facts = some but not a lot = 5-6 range, and then based on the above info he tends to score the essay a 7. Is this similar to what the AP readers do? How heavily weighted is outside facts? Our teacher always said that if you have a 7-9 thesis, used all the docs (or all but one), but only had a few outside facts, you’d still get a 5-7 ranged DBQ. True?</p>
<p>Umm… this thread just completely destroyed my confidence (I choose 2 and 5, not surprisingly). I was so sure I had gotten a 5! If the content on this thread IS true, here’s hoping it doesn’t affect my score…</p>
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Probably thinking about one while writing about the other.</p>
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I was thinking that also, but it’s come up at least twice in this thread. </p>
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What do you define as a lot lower? It’s only 1-5. If your score is 2 points lower that what you expected, it’s not because of the essay. The essay isn’t worth enough to do that to you. If your score is 1 point lower than you expected, it’s still probably not just the essay. It’s very unlikely that you’ll drop a point just because of the 5 essay’s grading criteria.</p>
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The graders are definitely more holistic than that. My teacher would never grade an essay that way. (Note that AP World History is closer to what you stated, in that the rubric specifically assigns point values to certain elements of each essay) In APUSH, the graders are generally told to be forgiving of small things. The quality of your essay overall is much more important than fitting every criteria.
This doesn’t mean you can skimp on things like outside information or document usage, although you definitely don’t need to use all the docs. My teacher suggested using half of the documents, rounding up. Using more might help your score, but only if it improves your essay’s quality. (all or all but one is excessive). Likewise, using less might hurt your score, but only if it lowers your essay’s quality (again, on AP World you have to use a certain number of documents, but here it’s just a general guideline). Don’t use no documents, because then the rubric will punish you (you don’t have to cite the documents, btw - a skilled writer who knows a lot about a topic can write a DBQ without even looking at the documents. I don’t suggest this.). The documents are designed to clue you in on what they hope for you to write about, not restrict you.
A strong thesis is probably necessary, but it won’t be rated. The key to a good score is that you have to take an arguable position on the topic and then defend that. The thesis is a very good way to tell the graders what your position is. Without a thesis, your essay will probably be of lower quality, and that is what will hurt your grade. (again, a skilled writer might be able to get away without writing a thesis, but a skilled writer would probably be so used to writing theses that it’s natural)
Outside facts - you’re screwed if you give a “document tour”. As I said, the documents clue you in to what to write about. They are there to give guidance to your essay, not to hold it up. If you use all the documents and have very few outside facts, your essay is likely to be a document tour essay, which will cause your grader to grumble at it (not a good thing). The grader will not rate your outside information, but if you’re just quoting or rephrasing the documents, that’s very bad.
The grader won’t try to find your thesis, document usage, support, etc…, but will definitely catch you if there’s a big problem.
The #5 essay just isn’t given enough weight to be likely to determine your score. It will only do that if you were on the fence between two score ranges, and maybe not even then.</p>
<p>@Dogod- I sure hope so. I was really expecting a 5.</p>
<p>All the essays are graded by the same standard. If Collegeboard gave out an easy topic on the SAT essay and everyone nailed it, they wouldn’t tell the graders to grade the essays more harshly. What might happen though, is that the raw score total neccessary to get a five would increase. They state specifically that each essay will be graded by the same standard, and changing that standard after the test has been administered would be inherently unfair. Sorry; you’re mistaken.</p>