Course Expectations/Requirements and Exam Information

Students who elect to take Advanced Placement Biology must fully understand the commitment before signing up for the course.

Advanced Placement (called AP's) classes are freshman college-level classes taught in more than 10,000 high schools throughout the United States. Advanced Placement courses are offered in a variety of genres, ranging from AP English to AP Latin, AP Chemistry to AP Music Theory. In all, more than 20 courses are offered by the College Board, Inc., the owner of the Advanced Placement classes.

Why would high school students elect to take a college level course? Advanced Placement classes offer a standardized course that can be taught throughout the nation with virtually the same syllabus. Students who do well on the Advanced Placement exam in May (information below) may apply the credit to the student's future university, allowing the student to skip the course and move into a higher level. Traditionally, many students have used AP courses to save money on college, but in more contemporary years, Advanced Placement classes and exams are used by college administrators as a standard of measure with students, since often grades may be inflated and inaccurate for comparison.

The 2007 Advanced Placement Biology exam will occur on Monday, May 14 at 8 AM. Students late to the examination will not be allowed to sit for the test. The examination is considered to be very difficult, and rarely, if ever, should students expect to score in the traditional score range (0-100%). Instead, the College Board has developed a special grading rubric, which consists of the following:

A Score of:
1 Denotes failure of the examination
2 Also denotes failure. Universities usually do not accept scores of 1 or 2 for college credit.
3 Denotes a passing grade. Usually, about 30-40% receive grades of 1 or 2, and 60-70%
receive a three or higher. A grade of three may be used for college credit at some
universities.
4 Indicates a very good knowledge of Biology. Many colleges accept a four for credit.
5 The highest score awarded. Most upper-echelon universities only accept a score of five for
credit.

The following grades represent all test-takers of the Advanced Placement Biology Exam in
2005.

Score:

5- Extremely Well Qualified
18.2% of all test-takers received this grade

4-Well Qualified
20.1%

3-Qualified
22.9%

2-Possibly Qualified
23.3%

1-No Recommendation
15.5%

Mean Grade
3.02

Standard Deviation
1.33

Number of Students
121,446

Number of Schools Administering AP
7,727

Number of Colleges Receiving AP Grades
2,283

The score does not reflect questions answered correctly, but however, the number of questions answered correctly compared to all AP Biology test-takers of the current year.

The AP Biology Examination consists of two components:
A) A 100-question multiple-choice section worth 60% of the exam score. Graded by machine.
B) Four essays (each about a page) on various topics. This section is graded by an AP Biology teacher (never your own), and worth 40% of the total raw score.

It is important to understand the grading system before sitting for the exam. Correctly answered multiple choice questions equal +1, omitted questions equal +0, and incorrectly answered questions equal -1/4 (one-fourth) of a point. On the essay section, points may only be added, never subtracted. Therefore, it is recommended students write anything that comes to mind on the essay questions, since incorrect answers have no penalties. In the essay section, too, the graders are looking for key words and phrases, so it is important to learn and memorize biological verbiage and underline it when used in a student's essays.

For a complete AP Biology Course Desciption from the College Board, visit http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_bio.html?biology

This website provides a course description, a topic outline, more information on the May exam, and sample multiple-choice and free-response questions for the exam.