<p>My husband thought my daughter should do an SAT prep class, and I couldn’t BELIEVE people actually DID that. I googled and ended up here. Wow! I had no idea!</p>
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<p>Same here~</p>
<p>I found out about CC while reading a college admission blog and the adcom mentioned someone posting on CC and I googled it.</p>
<p>We are about to head to school #2 on this final leg of college visits. D did not love the school we visited Friday. The campus was beautiful but not much to do in the surrounding town. Savannah is about 45 minutes away but not a big enough draw to interest her. She said it was OK and if she had to she would go there but its not at the top of list. Out of the 3 we have visited, its ranked #3.<br>
I am glad this is winding down. I think all the schools are starting to look the same.</p>
<p>D received her AP scores in the mail and was thrilled - two 3s and a 4. Ulike some of your kids, she really struggled in two of her APs…she knew that she could drop down to pre-AP and do better GPA-wise, but she wanted to challenge herself. Even though she ended up with 90/91 in the classes, she always felt like she was bringing up the rear among her friends. So to get threes on the AP exams was a nice form of validation.</p>
<p>Good for your daughter missypie!! 
Getting a big whoot-whoot from our house to yours!! Not every student is destined for a 5 on an AP exam. That does not mean that the student should not have taken the class, nor does it mean they didn’t master the material.
Job well done! :)</p>
<p>Our d left yesterday for Y leadership camp and is gone until Aug. After much nagging before she left, she finished her college list. 3 reaches, 3 matches, 1 safety (I think). While she is gone, I plan to schedule interviews and get all of the app. essay prompts together for her. I’d like for her to start the essays in Aug., but she’ll have 2 books to read for AP lit (with notes). I’m wondering if she should opt to take honor humanities instead, as there is no summer reading, and she could concentrate on her essays. Reading and writing are slow tortuous for this math/science girl. The rest of her Sr. yr class schedule is rigorous, so do y’all think it would be wise to suggest that she do the honors humanities instead of AP lit and focus on her app essays in Aug?</p>
<p>I’m thinking if the main concern is with the Aug reading and notes for AP lit and working on essays at the same time, it’s probably worth biting the bullet for that month and “moving a mountain,” (or letting the essays slide a little bit into Sep.</p>
<p>OTOH, do you have concerns with her keeping up in the AP with her rigorous schedule during the rest of the year? The 2 things that you mentioned were tough and slow-going for her (reading and writing) are the heavy emphasis of this course, and they do move fast.</p>
<p>I’d recommend taking the Honors Humanities couse instead of AP Lit. If reading and writing are tortuous for her and the rest of her program is rigorous as well, it will be unnecessary stress. Honors courses look fantastic on transcripts as well.</p>
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<p>A 5 doesn’t necessarily mean that the material was mastered, but a 4 or lower certainly means that it wasn’t mastered (unless the student grossly misbubbled).</p>
<p>"A 5 doesn’t necessarily mean that the material was mastered, but a 4 or lower certainly means that it wasn’t mastered "</p>
<p>A little issue of semantics? Most colleges that accept AP’s for credit, accept a score of 4. Many accept a 3. The material is “mastered” enough for a college to allow a student to take the next level course…</p>
<p>silverturtle, that’s like saying that a college student who didn’t get an A hasn’t mastered the material. Of course, getting an “A” in a college class doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve mastered the material either. 
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<p>I’m curious to know how students with AP scores of 3-5 “use” their AP credits, if at all. It seems that they’re mostly used to cover breadth requirements. Using them for coursework in your major might not be as common. Calculus (and maybe statistics) seem like the only AP courses where it’s easy to determine if the student really mastered the material to college level. That makes it straightforward to grant credit and have the student move on to second-year calculus. It can also be nice to use AP credits to bump up your class status if that helps with registration.</p>
<p>How are all of you/your children thinking of using AP credits? I can imagine D1 using some for breadth, but I can’t see her skipping a class because she got a 4 or a 5.</p>
<p>We’re hoping for honors or advanced status in her classes or major. Not expecting (or wanting) to skip classes.</p>
<p>Congratulations to Missypie’s daughter. Studying for 3 AP exams is no small feat.</p>
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<p>Syntactically, it’s similar; logically, it’s not. College tests are often subjective and are not standardized, so I would not make that claim. But on AP tests, the questions are so objective and the curves are so generous that any student who has mastered the material will get an easy 5.</p>
<p>I’m still not buying. A student could have an off day, and essay grading always has subjective elements. I’m thinking back to college. Two friends were lab partners. As was expected, they divided up the analysis work. They turned in two virtually identical lab reports. One received an A. The other received a B. Different graders grade differently.</p>
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<p>While I would encourage my S to use his 4 or 5 to for college credit towards humanities classes I would want my S to take any core math or science classes again at college. I just don’t trust that even a 5 means you have mastered the material enough to skip what I consider classes that build on each other from year to the next. Hopefully, no one is insulted, but as an engineer I found humanities classes much more difficutl than math and science, but I don’t think the humanities classes build on each other like math and science ones do. Plus if it ends up the class S could have skipped is easy for him, well good for him he has a gut class freshman year.</p>
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<p>I disagree. The CB defines their ratings as 5-Extremely well qualified, 4-Well qualified, 3-Qualified. Whether you prefer the word “mastered” or “qualified,” I think the CB’s intent is that a 3 means the student learned the material to a satisfactory level.</p>
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<p>Please read post #3175.</p>
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<p>I strongly disagree with the College Board’s definitions. The questions on AP exams are quite straightforward for the most part, yet one can receive around 30% on some of the exams and receive a score of 3. I, for example, considered my grasp of the AP Biology curriculum to be extraordinarily weak; nonetheless, I was able to score 5 on the AP exam, despite leaving the exam with the hopes of getting a 3 (which was more in line with what I deserved).</p>
<p>^ I think you should let them know what you think! What do THEY know? (smile)</p>
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<p>I have not seen any statistical support for those characterizations (and I, moreover, have mountains of personal anecdotes that belie them); so, indeed, I would (non-sarcastically) pose that question.</p>