<p>Biology 5.4% 21.4% 36.3% 29.5% 7.4%</p>
<p>How is this legitimate? I was absolutely confident that I got a 5 after taking the exam; I'm now praying for a 3 or 4. The collegeboard has gotten completely out of hand.
Just for reference, I'm an extremely biology oriented student; I work in a genetics research laboratory and I received a 790 on Bio M.
My god I'm distraught right now.</p>
<p>I want to take a guess at four reasons why the percentage of fives were too low:</p>
<p>1) Struggled with the mathematical applications, such as chi squared (and other statistical applications), Hardy-Weinberg applications, and so on. A couple of grid-ins (throughout all the tests I’m guessing) can be considered “trick questions” (to me anyway), unless you think about them, which was the purpose of such questions.</p>
<p>2) Typically wrote free responses in wrong formats, or in general formats without any specifics. This is typically the case in any exam, but it’s more obvious in Bio essays. You don’t want to write strictly details, but you can’t write in a nonspecific general case. A mix of both is prefered.</p>
<p>3) Not enough time. I’ve seen people not finish certain questions or not even attempt some as they ran out of time. Even I barely finished each section with a few minutes to spare (then again I took my time with it all).</p>
<p>4) The college standard is higher than before. Biology is probably one of the most preferred areas to study in college due to a large number of people wanting to be in the medical field (from my perspective anyway, although not all of them end up in the medical field). As such, maybe the college students who took the AP exam to set the standards did pretty well overall, and possibly the high school students met the passing point, but not necessarily the A point due to the three above reasons or other reasons.</p>
<p>Besides the obvious “putting in incorrect answers”, those are just my guesses at the low number of fives, yet a high number of those who passed. Anything can happen. We don’t remember exactly what we put down a month and a half ago when we took the exam. So just hope for the best. That’s what I’m doing.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with everything you stated, but I’m still in shock. I wasn’t expecting a huge increase in scores, but 5.4% is just incomprehensible, especially considering it’s the first time the test was administered.
Here’s to hoping the same thing doesn’t happen with chem next year?</p>
<p>The distribution is outrageous. I feel bad for everyone who took Biology and World History this year.</p>
<p>OMG I completely forgot the AP Bio scoring distributions were coming out today!</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I’m seriously scared for my score now… Biology has always been my best subject, and I consistently performed well on tests and such in class. I walked out of that AP exam feeling pretty good about it, but now I don’t know… 5.4% is honestly ridiculous.</p>
<p>Now I’m scared to receive my AP score for this class. I thought I did okay when I came out of the testing room, and then I saw this thread.
On the plus side, 50%+ pass rate. We’re gonna be okay (I hope).</p>
<p>the pass rate improved tremendously…if you don’t get a 5, you didn’t deserve one, but there’s still a ton of people with 4s and 3s. You really shouldn’t be “afraid” of your score unless you expected a 5, and even then, there are still a ton of people with 5’s.
in my opinion, the new test tested both critical thinking skills (which is a lot of what biology is now that information is always accessible in real-life applications) and the knowledge essential to introductory biology. I trust the collegeboard to have made the right decision in creating the cutoffs.</p>
<p>THey graded on a close enough bell curve. This what most of you wanted in the first place!</p>
<p>^Haha! I see… :)</p>
<p>Well that says it. If anything, there is a competition amongst for each academic department in the graduating class of the high school I used to attend. Took advantage of last year’s distribution, but I believe this exam serves as a good indicator to separate students for the science award ;)</p>
<p>You guys made some fair points, but I’m still ridiculously nervous. I’ve wanted a 5 since before I even enrolled in my AP Bio class, and if I’m not in that 5.4% I think I’m going to cry.</p>