<p>The College Board has released its annual report on the AP testing program, with many details and general statistics. </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>Thanks for the link, token. :)</p>
<p>EDIT: After reading through it, I wish they would report the new 2008 grade distributions for each AP test. That would be useful.</p>
<p>Very informative. Thanks for the link.</p>
<p>haha, found some stuff in here that pertains to what we’re discussing in psychology.</p>
<p>Thanks Tokenadult. Do you know of any data breaking down AP results by private vs. public school? Or other such data that divides the results by factors other than state and ethnicity?</p>
<p>The reason I ask is I’m looking at the Canadian data (different report), and in our province over 80% of AP exams score 3 or above (much higher than any state, with Maryland being 23%). </p>
<p>While I’d like to imagine it might reflect educational quality, it might just be due to different types of students in Canada taking such tests than those in the US (since AP is both less popular and less accessible here). An example would be if my D wanted to take say AP chemistry, she’d first have to take three full years of combined science from 8th to 10th grade, then if she had an 86% average she’d qualify for accelerated chemistry 11 which would then qualify her to take AP Chem in the 12th grade (but only if she also took the provincial Chem 12 course concurrently).</p>
<p>“The reason I ask is I’m looking at the Canadian data (different report), and in our province over 80% of AP exams score 3 or above (much higher than any state, with Maryland being 23%)”</p>
<p>You’re mistaken. 23% of Maryland students score a 3 or above on the AP tests, out of ALL students in Maryland. Which means 77% either don’t take a test or fail.</p>
<p>You apparently took it as out of all AP exams taken in Maryland, 23% of students are passing, which is the highest %. That’d be extremely unlikely lol</p>
<p>^DUUUH. Thanks for pointing out my dumb mistake. I feel so silly. </p>
<p>I’d been reading the Canadian report, which really IS showing scores by only those who take it, and assumed I was looking at something similar in the US report! </p>
<p>Well isn’t that rather meaningless then…where would one find a distribution of scores for the US test takers?</p>
<p>
standard is 20-20-20-20-20(little bit more skewed towareds middle), so 18-19-26-19-18
and somwhere betwen 60-70% people pass.</p>
<p>^ thanks.</p>
<p>I just found a report at the AP site which provides grade distributions by subject. It shows percentages of 3 or above that range from a low of 48% (APUSH) to a high of 98% (Chinese). Would be nice if it was further broken down by state though.</p>
<p>oh god help us, take a look at that graph in the PDF… asians and their multiple ap courses… :)</p>
<p>5th annual ? Is this recently started by CB?</p>
<p>they should call this the 5th annual report on minorities. Any one else hate that they analyze the scores by race and not a meaningful category like income bracket?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Would you please link to that? </p>
<p>And, based on what you’ve posted, is it safe to infer that APUSH is the “hardest” AP? (for lack of a quicker description)</p>
<p>Subject specific data: </p>
<p>[AP</a> - Report to the Nation](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools) </p>
<p>(overview page) </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>(.PDF file for all subjects tested in 2008)</p>
<p>Congratulations, Maryland! And to think… without my test, New York could’ve taken over. Improbable, but maybe!?</p>
<p>I don’t know that it’s safe to infer that APUSH is the hardest AP. Many more take that exam than, say, AP Calculus BC. And so on.</p>
<p>Yea, and the numbers I looked at from a few years ago showed the percentage of people getting 3+ on Calc BC to be more than twice as high as those getting 3+ in AB but the BC is by definition harder. It just depends on the group of students taking the test.</p>
<p>This is totally irrelevant but the girl in the cover looks far too young to be an AP test taker.</p>
<p>Relevant comment: great information, thank you for the link.</p>
<p>Thanks for the links!</p>
<p>Can’t infer that some tests are ‘harder’ than others since people are more self-selective for some than others (e.g. everyone and his dog might take a crack at APUSH but only a relatively select few try Chinese or calculus).</p>
<p>Given Maryland’s and Virginia’s relatively high positions in this study, it’s probably only fair to mention this: </p>
<p>[2008</a> Challenge Index | washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://projects.washingtonpost.com/challengeindex/ranking/2008/]2008”>http://projects.washingtonpost.com/challengeindex/ranking/2008/)</p>
<p>This “Challenge Index” report has been going on for the last 10 years or so, and I’d say in the last 5 years has become a real presence in at least my counties’ schools - that is, local schools are rather insistent that students take one or more AP courses, and I’ve heard more than one principal refer specifically to this report as an impetus.</p>
<p>Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - a “competition” seems to provide some extra focus and energy - but many think it’s full of unintended and often negative consequences.</p>
<p>I believe the original report only recorded AP course attendance, not necessarily AP test-takers. I recall the local school system changing policy so that AP course takers must also take the associated test (their score not affecting their letter grade); it seemed that the schools were gaming the system, herding students into “AP level” courses, but in fact, teaching at less-than-AP level. Anyway, I probably have some details wrong on this, so don’t quote me … :)</p>