Sunday, January 31, 2016

I Didn't Know AP Tests Were Scored Any Other Than 1 Thru 5

Apparently they are, and getting a 5 doesn't mean you "aced" it.  Only 12 people on the planet aced the AP Calculus test last year:
What's 12 divided by 302, 532?

It comes out to .00003967 or .003967 percent. That's the percentage of students in the entire world who took the test and earned a perfect score on the infamously difficult college-level Advanced Placement Calculus exam last year.

Cedrick Argueta, the son of a Salvadoran maintenance worker and a Filipina nurse, was in that tiny fraction of perfection, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the self-described quiet 17-year-old senior at Lincoln High — a school of about 1,200 students in the heavily Latino Lincoln Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles — called the news "crazy."

"Twelve people in the whole world to do this and I was one of them? It's amazing," he told the Times.
Though Argueta found out over the summer that he had achieved the highest score, a 5, on the three-hour and 15-minute test, he only found out about his perfect score last week when the College Board sent a letter to the school's principal.
Who knew!

And good for Cedrick for achieving excellence.

UpdateHere's a little more information.

2 comments:

Joshua Sasmor said...

I have graded AP calculus exams during the summer. All 6 of the free-response questions are 9 points each. We get a training session on the official AP rubric for the question we will grade - it describes when points will be awarded, and what phrases or equations we are looking for. Then grade that problem for two days. Then we switch problems. We do all the exams in a week (there were 424000 last year, AB and BC combined).

The multiple choice questions are also graded and the two scores are added for a final score. Then the AP calculus committee decides what point ranges count as a 5, 4, etc. It's a fun job for a week.

Ellen K said...

I've been told that although a 6 is possible, nobody ever receives it.