<p>thanks tokenadult...I guess my SAT IIs do need to be higher to provide adcoms with a good picture of my effort.</p>
<p>I wonder if the College Board would ever create a "5+" score to indicate success with a far more rigorous cutoff. It would probably be best if somewhere between 1-3% of test takers received such a score, which would then actually be useful in admission to a place like Caltech.</p>
<p>Of course, this would require the College Board to admit that a 5-scorer isn't "extremely well qualified", which is the absurd label they currently use. That's probably not going to happen. In addition, some AP tests (I'm thinking economics/statistics especially) test at such a low level in their fields that even a higher cutoff wouldn't be particularly enlightening.</p>
<p>A 5.1-5.10 system would be even more entertaining. To answer all the questions on the AP Calc correctly actually does require some speed and cleverness, which getting a 5 generally does not, at least in terms of what "speed and cleverness" means at Caltech. So a 5.10 would be something I'd be impressed by. But you're right -- the CB will never do this.</p>
<p>An AP score of 5 IS "extremely well qualified" in the context of many colleges. But those colleges are not Caltech. The College Board does validation studies every so often by giving college students who have just completed a college course with known grades an AP test--that is what sets the standard for AP scoring. This simply illustrates that at most colleges--as at most schools in general--sorta, kinda knowledge is good enough to pass a course with a good grade. Caltech attempts to set a higher standard, because it is trying to take a population of young people who find AP tests easy and put them into a program that is intellectually challenging even for them.</p>