So this morning I took the AP US Government and Politics exam, and while I’m not allowed to talk about the content very specifically, there were a few questions (one of which was free response, and worth a whole lot more) that relied on information in the class – but I wouldn’t have remembered that stuff if I hadn’t seen it on here before. coughLemon testcough So thanks, lawyers of the Dope! In around ten weeks, I’ll know if it got me a five!
My daughter is taking two AP exams next week: English and Pyschology. We have no doubt she’ll do well, but still she’s somewhat worried.
Hope it all works out for you.
Hey, this place is handy. I use stuff I learned here all the time, including in classes. (Never on an AP test, though.)
How were your exams this year? I’m IB now, so I miss all the excitement. 
Twelve pages in 1:45, holding my right hand with my left as I wrote to ease the cramps… ah, the memories.
I’ve learned more about debating on this site than I did in debate club in high school - and I was captain my senior year. (Of course, I was so nervous about arguing my opinions in public that I judged more often than I debated, but still.)
Captain Carrot, I forget exactly how I did in AP Government - I think I got a 4 while snoozing through the class, our teacher was awful - but if I’d been posting on the Dope back then, I’d have been a monster in that class. I hope you got the 5.
I was one of the few to pass, with I think a 4 thanks to this place. The class itself was a joke. We maybe had a graded assignment every once in awhile. Mostly, the teacher collected bets while we booked them, gambling over which person in the class was grading the lowest grade for assignments in the teacher’s other classes. We also roamed the halls, frequently left to play soccer outside, etc. Good stuff.
What is it and what does it qualify you to do?
Advanced Placement. It’s a program of intensified classes that high school student here in the states can take. Scoring high enough on the tests at the end of the class can earn you college credit. 5, if memory serves, is the highest possible score. Someone can probably explain it better. I did IB (International Baccalaureate) similar to AP, only international (as the name suggests) rather than US based. A different execution but the same general concept.
Congrats Cap! I got a 4 on my AP Gov’t test (all of 5 years ago.) May just have gotten a 5 if I’d been a Doper at the time.
Folks, bear in mind that I don’t actually know what score I got yet. However, there were a couple of questions that I was able to answer properly because of stuff I read on the Dope, and that may have made the difference between a 4 and a 5 (which in this case means the difference between one semester and two semesters’ worth of credit next year).
Good luck to her. I score the English exams, and I can give her a few tips:
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Avoid the five-paragraph, three-point essay. We’re looking for a single coherent argument, not a list.
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If you’re going to use literary terms – “hyperbole,” “assonance,” “irony,” etc., make sure you use them correctly, and in a context where they make sense. Avoid the word “diction” completely – it’s vague and overused, and “word choice” will do just as well.
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Allusions to other literary works will generally score big points with the examiners, as long as you don’t let them distract you from the task at hand. Pointing out, in passing, that Oscar Wilde’s use of irony reminds you of Jane Austen’s = good; seizing on this as an excuse to write your entire essay on Pride and Prejudice instead = bad.
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In general, read the question carefully and make sure you understand it thoroughly, and always respond to the question that was asked. Restating the question within the text of your essay is OK, but put it into your own words rather than simply regurgitating the phrasing of the exam (and if you have any difficulty paraphrasing the question, it’s probably a sign that you don’t completely understand what you’re being asked to do – go back, take a deep breath, reread).
Per 1 and 2, I think the worst thesis statement I saw last year was something along the lines of “Wilde uses irony to characterize Lord Darlington, diction to characterize the Duchess of Berwick, and syntax to characterize Lady Windermere.” Avoid anything that sounds even vaguely like this!
And congratulations, Captain Carrot!
Well, when I took Adavanced Placement classes my senior year of high school (back when the earth was cooling), it got my 12 university credits (3 credits for each of 3 classes) and the right to skip English 101 (university bonehead freshman composition) since a 4 or 5 on the AP English test was the equivalent of “testing out” of comp.
You take the AP class during junior or senior year of high school; it’s an “honors” class in place of the normal, mainstream similar class taken by most students. At the end of the year, you take a standardized test for your subject, and if you get a high pass score (a 4 or a 5), you get university credit for having taken the class. It also looks good on your uni application since AP classes are “smart kids” classes. The test is scored on a scale from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest possible score.
AP English, AP History, AP American Government – all 5’s, baby. 
I think someone called my name.
AP and IB get put together for convenience (I like to equate them, too, for my international classmates) but they’re not really all that similar. They both can get you college credit, but:
-AP is just individual classes. You don’t have to take an AP program per se; you can just take one class. In fact, the College Board (the administrative body of AP) only recommends two per year. (Yeah, right.) IB, in contrast, is every single class you take; there are six, and they have to be in the right topics, etc.
-You can take an AP test without taking any corresponding class, should you wish it. Your entire score (1-5) is based on a single, three-hour exam. For IB, you get scored (1-7) on a mix of tests, Internal Assessments, External Assessments, and other stuff.
-The result: AP gives you a normal school grade from a normal school, plus the centrally administered score. IB gives you only the IB grade, acheived at a registered IB school.
-IB classes last either two years or four years – an AP course lasts one year (or even one semester.)
-The cliché is that AP is less in-depth than IB and gives you less understanding. In my own experience, though, IB just covers a massive number of topics superficially. Then again, I happen to have had much better teachers at my former high school, so my experience is somewhat slanted.
-Straight Man
(Who pulled 5’s on European History, American History, Calc. BC, and Physics C. Yeah, I love AP.)
ETA: you can take AP whenever you please. I took Euro. in 10th grade, and I know people who have taken AP classes in 9th grade.
Surely this is school-dependent? In my high school, AP English was a senior class, as was AP American Government. They were the harder (honors) version of the senion English and American Government classes all seniors had to take. You were not allowed to take them as a junior or less, because then you were taking the junior level of English and whatever the junior social studies class was. And in my school, you could not sit for the AP exam without taking the class, though to be fair I doubt it would have occurred to anyone to even ask to do so.
It is entirely school-dependent. I teach AP Euro to 10th graders. (They are, in fact, writing a DBQ on Vichy France as I type.) The big selling point I make for my class is that if they get a 3 or better on the Euro test, and a 3 or better on the US History test, they likely won’t have to take a history class in college.
Cap, my debaters seemed to think that this years AP Govt. test was pretty easy. Do you concur?
But no AP math… 
Not being snarky, I promise! Just teasing!
My students are taking AP Chemistry in about a week. At this point their brains are pretty much mush so I’m having a hard time guiding them through meaningful review activities.
HA! No, no math. I guess that would be only 9 credits. 3 x 3 . . . let me take off my shoes to do this . . . .
I took IB also, and got a whole bunch of college credits (29), some useful and some not. If my school had offered both IB and AP I’m not sure what I’d have done. All of the stuff that is part of the IB program that was beyond the classes/exams was pretty difficult, but challenging and somewhat rewarding. It made for a pretty stressful high school experience, more so than college was a lot of the time. IIRC, as far as the exams were concerned the IB emphasized writing a great deal more than AP does.
Oh! And make sure you tell us when you find out, CaptainCarrot !
The most helpful high-school class I ever took was AP Composition. We read a short story or essay and wrote a paper about twice a week, then critiqued the papers. It was so helpful to learn to write a 3-4 page essay in a short period of time. Fast, fast, fast. Of course, now I realize that this was just training for the Dope.
Well, I certainly hope you did well. My students take the Lit test on Thursday, so they’re on pins and needles, for sure. I’m curious, most of my AP English students took the Government test on Monday, and almost all of them said it was easier than they expected it to be (not that it was EASY, but that their teacher scared the beejeebus out of them and gave them Practices From Hell). Did you feel that at all, that you were expecting a lot tougher? I’m wondering if I’m being too dang nice to the kids. Although, I assigned them three essays last week which represented poor planning on my part – because I had to grade 150 essays this weekend…
I frickin’ hate Ethan Frome at the moment.
Eh, I didn’t really know what to expect. This was my first AP where I had experience with taking the exam, but I wasn’t either mediocre or good. Latin, Calc BC, and CompSci I got 5s on, but US History and Music Theory I got 3s. I don’t really know whether I’ll be satisfied with a 4 on this or not, but I do think that a lot of the questions were fairly easy.
I’ve got Lit in two days, and I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t write snap essays very well, and most of the multiple choice reading comprehension and analysis questions are pretty subjective.
Oh, and Jodi, I think English and Government are exceptions to the general rule of ‘take it whenever you want’. Some APs like Euro and Music Theory don’t depend on previous courses, and some like Biology and Chem go after courses that you take early on. In my AP Latin class sophomore year, there were seniors and juniors; there was also another sophomore and one freshman. A couple of the seniors and juniors were also in AP Bio. So yeah, mostly you take APs whenever you have room for them, but there are some like English, Government, and US History that are prescribed for a certain year.
Hmm, my daughter is a junior taking both of her AP classes.
They were actually trying to put her in AP Engish as a sophomore, but for some odd reason she resisted. She was taking Honors English at the time. At any rate, she’s glad she took it this year.
I’ll be curious to hear her reaction to the tests.