http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_385.html
I heard something similar to this statement about a student in Brookline scoring a 6 on the AP US History test, and of course I’m a bit skeptical. Is it just another typo?
I haven’t been able to find any information on any student in Massachusetts (or any other part of the U.S.) scoring anything higher than a 5 on any of the AP tests. I’m fairly confident that noone has gotten anything higher than a 5 (with the possible exception of a typo on their grade report) because the grade scale doesn’t allow for that possibility.
From Kaplan’s site on AP Testing:
The only chance (that I can think of) you have of getting something higher than a 5 would be to take an AP Test that has a free response section. Since the grading is subjective, I guess it would be possible for one of the test administrators to be so overwhelmed by a student’s essay that they give them a 6. I checked a list of all the Free Response grades given out by the College Board since 1999 (the year that free response questions were given on US History tests), and the highest grade given was a 5 (10% of all free responses were graded as 5’s).
I got a 740 on the math part of the SAT I just because I skipped the last three questions due to lack of time. I answered everything else right. Those three stupid questions dropped me 60 points.
Darn the College Board. Darn them to heck.
But wait! As Cecil says,
So your score is still statistically equavalent to an 800. Feel better?
Thanks, zut! I guess that means that statistically, my score could be equal to a 680 in ability, too. That’s okay with me, and anyway, I like to think positive.
Back to the OT…My Spanish teacher swore that it was possible to get a 6, only if you got every single question right and a perfect score on every free response. It’s possible that she might have actually seen some of these, too–at my school, there are lots of native Spanish speakers who just breeze through the AP test.
A 6 on an AP test is about as likely as scoring a 1700 on the SAT. The scale just doesn’t go that high.
People swear they’ve been abducted by aliens, too. And we just won’t get into gerbil-stuffing. I’d make sure the teacher had a framed printout personally autographed by one of the test’s Powers that Be before I deemed her claim too trustworthy; it’s awfully common for people to swear to things based only on what their best friend swore her uncle’s ex-girlfriend saw.
The essay is out of a set amount of points. Let’s say ten. The grader reads the essay, and the student gets points for everything he writes. As soon as the amount of points has reached ten, the grader stops reading, regardless of how much left there is to read. Also, if the question asks for three examples of something, and the student lists more than that, the reader will only read the first three examples.
Looking back over some old SAT tests, I notice that the last questions tend to have at least one of the hardest questions, so you basically ran out of time doing some of the easier questions. Typically, a person who scores 800 on the SAT not only finishes all of the problems in the time limit, but has time left over to go back and check their work on all the problems.
It takes good time management and organization to score 800 on the SAT, as well as knowledge. Plus, 740 is a pretty decent score, and might be a good indicator of your current ability. Perhaps you could take the test again, armed with your knowledge of how best to manage the time–of course, you should have taken a practice test before.
One can potentially score higher than a 5 on an AP English test, but only on the essay portion. The essay is scored out of 9, and the multiple choice is scored out of 5. 60% of the MC score and 40% of the essay score (I think) are added together to come up with the student’s score.