Question??

Applying to College
1

<p>In my sophomore year, I decided to take AP biology. The teacher who had been teaching it for 15 years before had decided to step down and gave the position to the regular biology teacher. Mind you, I had never taken an AP class before so I did not know the "real" rigors required to pass the test. The year was kind of a joke, I had a solid A the whole year, the teacher never graded our free responses (the students did), and she said she refused to teach us about the whole evolution process. I ended up teaching myself most of the class and I also ended up not passing. I wanted to see what was wrong so I talked to collegeboard and they said that if the test was only multiple choice, I would have received a 4 but I had defaulted to a 1 on the essays because it did not have a thesis statement...something or other. I had never even learned that the essays were actual formal essays! </p>

<p>Should I communicate this with the UCs?</p>

<p>ps. the next years I took AP classes from more qualified teachers and passed them all</p>

2

<p>bump...........</p>

3

<p>Your AP experience isn't some huge blight on your record that you need to excuse it away. Don't sweat it. You got an A in the class and for all the 0.5 seconds that every adcom will look at the non-4 or 5 -- it won't matter much at all. Class ranking, GPA and rigor of schedule matters. Not AP scores -- especially as a Soph.</p>

4

<p>I thought that way too, I just needed a second opinion.</p>

<p>I shouldn't have an excuse anyway...I should have known.</p>

5

<p>bump.........</p>

6

<p>I don't think you can explain it to colleges anywhere on the application, unless you mention it casually in an interview. If you try to explain it in writing, you might come off as a little haughty by blaming the teacher. I wouldn't mention it. As T26 mentioned, it isn't a huge blight on your application, and I think mentioning it would just bring more attention to it.</p>