<p>Can someone please explain the foolery that seemed to go through the head AP Biology reader when he established this curve?</p>
<p>I’ll be mad if I don’t get a 5 with this new test. I was consistently and easily scoring 5s on the old tests, and this new test was stupid! They’re crazy to make the curve this low, especially when they barely gave us any information or practice tests for what the test would actually be like.</p>
<p>AP exams aren’t curved. If you earn the score, you get the score. This was the first year for AP bio and the updated exam was very different than what was expected.</p>
<p>The AP bio exam this year was filled with “critical thinking” questions. It was not enough to simply know and identify the Biology information as it was in the past. </p>
<p>The same occurs in AP World. on the MC, it wasn’t simply good enough to know that Buddhism spread to china. There are secondary factors and historical inferences you needed to know/understand if you wanted to get the MC questions on Buddhism correct.</p>
<p>~going to a school where AP Bio credit is useless so score is irrelevant~</p>
<p>My guess would be I got a 3 based on my MC score alone. Grid-in and FRQ were bad. Though a 2 is just as likely.</p>
<p>^ check if georgetown has your scores posted on your Portal.</p>
<p>It doesn’t </3</p>
<p>They are trying to crush prospective Med students who need a 5 on Bio in order to get credit. It’s all a big plan so colleges earn money. Collegeboard doesn’t care if you get a 5 or 1, they got your 83$. However, the college cares. Thus by making less 5’s, less students get Bio credit and have to take Bio in college. Colleges profit. </p>
<p>CB and colleges are doing these underhand deals. It’s just like the Federal government and the corporations. </p>
<p>CB will be slowly redesigning every course, they started with Bio, now they are doing Chem, soon Physics, Calc, Stat, Psych… you wait… Take all the exams you can before they get redesigned.</p>
<p>college edu in US is corrupt</p>
<p>more news at 11</p>
<p>Or ensuring a higher standard for med students? ^^ was a ■■■■■ but bio/chem for science majors should have stringent standards for AP credit.</p>
<p>@dragooner4 well that is very conspiratorial. The truth is that for many years, even the most advanced curriculum in the US has been focused on recall and nothing more. Those who got a 5 on AP bio previously were not ready for bio 2 in university. They reformed the syllabus and the test. It may seem more challenging, but is that not the point of advanced curriculum in the first place? People who may not get fives just need to stop whining and realize that they didn’t display enough mastery of the subject to move beyond simply recalling facts</p>
<p>You calling me stupid?</p>
<p>no, it’s because I highly, highly doubt most teachers were able to adapt well to the lab based model.</p>
<p>Our class walked out and went “IT WAS THAT FREAKING EASY?!?!?! WE STUDIED A YEAR FOR THAT?!?!”, but I think that was due to the fact that our teacher made us do so many labs, along with learning the usual material. </p>
<p>I think the curve is indicative of growing pains from switching to the new format. It’ll probably balance out in the next few years. Memorizing facts beyond the intermediate level has been thrown out the window by this test. You actually need to use critical thinking and analysis, rather than memorization.</p>
<p>I really doubt that the college board is trying to crush pre-med hopes and dreams. You needed a 79% for a 5. If you didn’t earn 79%, you didn’t earn a 5. They don’t curve exams, they scale them. Some people are so bitter that they don’t receive grades they think they deserve; that’s messed up. There is a life lesson to be learned here.</p>
<p>College classes are not always about spitting out facts. The exam, like people have said already, deals with critical thinking skills involving biological facts. College students are supposed to excel in critical thinking, hense the higher scores from college students. High school students taking a college level class must meet the standards of college students to gain credit. Because so many college students earned a pretty high score, the grade cutoffs are much higher than before. High school students have either underestimated the exam, or have not been trained to think critically as much to do well (hense lack of time, struggling, skipping questions, and so on). </p>
<p>Maybe the percentage of 5s will increase next year. Or maybe it will decrease, like the world history exam. It depends on the students taking the exam next year.</p>