<p>I haven't seen a thread publicizing this yet, so here you go. (Copied from the official Facebook page)</p>
<p>"So the THIS IS SPARTA group was pretty epic last year, so lets do it again!</p>
<p>Send this to all your friends taking an AP test!</p>
<p>No one will deny that The Dark Knight was one of, if not the, best movies of the year. Even before its release people were quoting it and the hype was as high as a Harry Potter book release. Lets keep it going and play off the meme created last year for the AP test. Since I couldn't find an official spin off from last years, I started one.</p>
<p>The goal: Twice as many people as the Sparta group from last year.
That means 60,000 people
Lets do it :]</p>
<p>Alright, the steps
1) In the middle of an essay randomly write the words "WHY SO SERIOUS?"
2) Draw a single line through what you just wrote
3) Continue with the essay as normal</p>
<p>It WILL NOT effect your score if you strike it out! Anything with a line through it is considered "not a part of the essay".</p>
<p>We all need some entertainment in the midst of the stress of AP tests right?"</p>
<p>I remember that group. People were posting pictures of what they wrote. I was left wondering "How the hell did they get cameras/camera phones into the AP test?"</p>
<p>My S said it did not affect the grading, at least not his. He had fun participating in the Spata spoof and, as he predicted at the end of AP testing, he got: AP Calc BC 5, Ap SPanish Language 5, AP Euro History 4.</p>
<p>lol I saw this on facebook :)
and I asked my lit teacher who is an AP reader and she said "technically" it doesn't count against your score, but that the test is not graded by a "technical" person or a computer, and a grader may be less inclined to let something slide/be lenient if he or she sees something stupid/immature. Like Derivate said, it will invoke reader bias.</p>
<p>she also said she saw the This is sparta ones last year and they had a whole discussion about it :) </p>
<p>I think it's genius, but I'm really too much of a wimp to jeopardize my grade like that lol.</p>
<p>Same here U.Va, I'm worried my grader will be biased. I know it's technically not supposed to hurt your grade, but I don't want my scorer to frown and grade my essays in a dark mood.</p>
<p>Okay, I don't endorse taking a picture. That would be very very very dumb. But I tend to think that if you have all the right information in your essay, and present it in the right manner, you will get the grade you deserve.
From what I understand about the grading process, two different graders have to review your essay and their scores (0-9) have to be within one point of each other, or they are looked at by the group "foreman." (If that's not right, please correct me. But that is how it was explained to me.) That means that not one but TWO graders that look at your essay would have to be no-fun party poopers for you to really be penalized.
I have more faith in the coolness of our AP graders than that. In all the stories/blogs I read about last year's prank, they seemed to think it was pretty funny, or even imagined that it was some grandiose political statement about civil disobedience. (Silly grown-ups.)
But it is just for fun. If you're really nervous about it, don't do it. I didn't last year and now I kind of regret it, so this is my big gesture to make up for it.</p>
<p>Xav - There are some discussions on that Facebook group on how to work the phrase into some of the trickier exams, like Calculus, Computer Science, and Physics. I'm taking AB so I don't know how well this would work for you, but I was planning on using it as u if there is a u-substitution free response question. </p>
<p>dy/dx = cos(sin x) Whysoserious = sin x
dWhysoserious = cos x dx
dy = cos(Whysoserious) x dWhysoserious
y = -sin(sin x) cos x</p>