I’m talking about the one that places you out of upper-division writing. I got a ‘5’ on the AP English Lit exam, and in high school I planned to major in English (now going for Electrical Engineering).
I took it at the end of sophomore year and passed. I felt like I wrote a pretty bad essay too. I basically responded exactly to the prompt, incorporated things from the readings, and offered very little insight beyond explaining why some quote was relevant to the prompt, and still passed.
On the other hand, my roommate didn’t pass and claims she did something similar to me. But then I’ve seen her writing and she tends to get off topic and not have cohesive paragraphs.
Basically it seems like if you write a cohesive essay that incorporates the reading and responds to the prompt, you’ll probably be fine. Advisers tend to blow it severely out of proportion. And if you do fail it the first time, they offer to go over it with you if you want to try it one last time. If you fail it twice, you have to take the class.