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Advanced Placement

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The Advanced Placement Program, commonly known as Advanced Placement, or AP, is a United States and Canada-based program that offers high school students the opportunity to receive university credit for their work during high school.

The non-profit College Board, (((IF IT WAS NON-PROFIT, WHY DOES IT CHARGE $82 PER TEST AS OPPOSED TO THE FREE TESTING. THE STATE PROVIDES))), which has run the program since 1955, develops and maintains courses in various subject areas, supports those who teach the courses, supports universities as they define their policies related to AP grades, and develops and coordinates the administration of annual AP examinations. These activities are funded through fees charged to students taking AP Exams.

In 2002, over one million high school students participated in AP courses; over 90% of them took the corresponding AP exam. Many high schools offer AP courses, though the College Board allows the home-schooled and others who have not taken a course at a high school to take the exam. Exams cost $82 each. Until the 2005 exams, exams in the same category could be taken together and only paid for once. For example, both economics, or both physics, or both government exams, for $82 per set. Starting in 2006, each exam costs $82. Financial aid is still available for students with demonstrated need.

In some high schools with an exam exemption policy, an AP Exam can be taken in place of the school's final exam and the final grade given to the student in that case is the final quarter/semester grade without the exam.

History

In May 1951, a group of educators from three of America's elite prep schools (Phillips Academy, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the Lawrenceville School) and three of the country's most prestigious colleges (Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University) convened to discuss the best use of the final two years of high school and the first two years of college. This committee published a final report, General Education in School and College (Harvard University Press, 1952), which led to the establishment of the AP Exams.

Exams

Each May, participating Canadian, American, and some international educational institutions offer the Advanced Placement examinations, the natural focal point of the Advanced Placement program. All but one of the AP exams combine multiple-choice questions with a free-response section in either essay or problem-solving format. (AP Studio Art, the sole exception, requires students to submit a portfolio for review.)

Each June, the free-response sections and Studio Art portfolios are scored by thousands of university faculty and Advanced Placement instructors at a number of Advanced Placement Readings in locations throughout the United States. These free-response sections are scored according to rubrics designed for the specific prompts. Before the readers arrive, a number of people from the Advanced Placement Program's Reading Leadership randomly select a number of free response booklets and match these booklets against the preliminary question rubrics designed by the test development committee when they wrote the question. If, based on the sampling, the students did not perform as well as expected, the scoring rubric is made easier. If, based on the sampling, the students did better than expected, the scoring rubric is made more difficult. In addition, the Reading Leadership attempts to find what they believe epitomizes the best example of a free response that should be scored at each score level (usually the free responses are scored on a scale of 0 to 9) for purposes of training the readers. It usually takes about one week for the readers to score all of the free responses sections for one exam.

The exams themselves are not tests of the students' mastery of the course material in a traditional sense. Rather, the students themselves set the grading rubrics and the scale for the "AP Grades" of each exam. When the AP Reading is over for a particular exam, the free response scores are combined with the results of computer-scored multiple-choice questions based upon a previously announced weighting. The Chief Reader (a college or university faculty member selected by ETS and The College Board) then meets with members of ETS and sets the cutoff scores for each AP Grade. The Chief Reader's decision is based upon what percentage of students earned each AP Grade over the previous three years, how students did on multiple-choice questions that are used on the test from year to year, how he or she viewed the overall quality of the answers to the free response questions, how university students who took the exam as part of experimental studies did, and how students performed on different parts of the exam. No one outside of ETS is allowed to find out a student's raw score on an AP Exam and the cutoff scores for a particular exam are only released to the public if that particular exam is released in total (this happens on a staggered schedule and occurs approximately once every five years for each exam). The AP Grades that are reported to students, high schools, colleges, and universities in July are on AP's five-point scale:

  • 5: Extremely well-qualified
  • 4: Well-qualified
  • 3: Qualified
  • 2: Possibly qualified
  • 1: No recommendation

Many colleges and universities in the U.S. grant credits or advanced placement based on AP grades; those in over twenty other countries do likewise. Policies vary by institution, but most schools require a score of 3 or higher on any given exam for credit to be granted or course pre-requisites to be waived. Colleges may also take AP grades into account when deciding which students to accept, though this is not part of the official AP program.

Subjects

The College Board offers 35 advanced placement exams including:

An expanding curriculum

In 2003, trustees of the College Board approved a plan for new courses in Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The first of these was announced several months later: an Advanced Placement exam in "Italian Language and Culture" will be the first new exam to be offered, starting in this testing year.

AP Scholar Designations

Each year, the AP program recognizes students who have performed exceptionally well on AP examinations. Exams are taken in May and awards are usually granted in September. The following designations can be earned:

AP Scholar Awards
Designation Criteria
AP Scholar Grades of 3 or better on three or more AP exams.
AP Scholar with Honor Grades of 3 or better on four or more AP exams and an average of 3.25 on all* AP exams taken.
AP Scholar with Distinction Grades of 3 or better on five or more AP exams and an average of 3.5 on all* AP exams taken.
National AP Scholar Grades of 4 or better on eight or more AP exams and an average of 4 on all* AP exams taken. Must be a student in the United States.
National AP Scholar (Canada) Grades of 4 or better on five or more AP exams and an average of 4 on all* AP exams taken. Must be a student in Canada.
AP State Scholar Top male and female student in each U.S. state (and the District of Columbia) ranked first by the greatest number of exams with a grade 3 or higher and then by highest average on all* AP exams taken.
Department of Defense for Education Activity (DoDEA) Scholar Same as the AP State Scholar award except the student must attend a DoDEA school. Any recipient of this award must also at least meet the criteria for a AP Scholar.
AP International Scholar Same as the AP State Scholar Award and DoDEA Scholar awards except the student must attend an American international school (which must also not be a DoDEA school).

*Note: "All AP exams taken" refers to all AP exams taken in any year. It is not restricted to the year the award is issued in.

AP International Diploma

The AP program also awards the AP International Diploma for Overseas Study (APID) to students who have applied to colleges outside of the United States that have completed a sequence of AP exams with satisfactory grades. In particular, a student must earn a grade of 3 or better on five or more AP exams in three of the following five areas:

Area I: Languages
English Language and Composition English Literature and Composition French Language
French Literature German Language Latin Literature
Latin: Virgil Spanish Language Spanish Literature
Chinese Language and Culture Italian Language and Culture Japanese Language and Culture
Russian Language and Culture International English
Area II: Sciences
Biology Chemistry Environmental Science
Physics B Physics C: Mechanics Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
Area III: Mathematics
Calculus AB Calculus BC Statistics
Area IV: History and Social Sciences
Human Geography Comparative Government and Politics U.S. Government and Politics
European History U.S. History World History
Macroeconomics Microeconomics Psychology
Area V: Other
Art History Computer Science A Computer Science AB
Music Theory Studio Art: 2-D Design Studio Art: 3-D Design

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Advanced Placement

References

  • AP Research Technical Manual - Can only be accessed through The College Board's website for AP professionals
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