My fear is that the degree of grade inflation will be even more variable among high schools than it already is. I can’t imagine what colleges might think of that.
May be some grade inflation, may be lots of pass/fail transcripts…time will tell.
Maybe some colleges will disregard this semester’s grades for the juniors.
I don’t think there will be wide-spread cheating. I don’t think there CAN be wide-spread cheating. D21 has taken a few tests online where it’s impossible to open other pages and browsers, and the test is so difficult and there are so many questions that there wouldn’t be time to cheat. It would take too long to look something up…if you do that then you lose time answering questions. You either know it or you don’t, that kind of thing.
Per Trevor Packer twi tter, AP exams will be FRQ only. Keeping my expectations for the AP exam experience on the low side.
I think that, between widespread cheating, grade inflation, wide disparities in instruction and missed ECs there will be such a blurring and maybe flattening of stats, it will be hard for AO’s to distinguish between students. I think (for better or worse) there may be greater academic diversity in the range of students accepted to any given T-50 school now, as it may be harder to parse the truly outstanding students from the very good ones. Or there may be more emphasis placed on academic and EC achievement in grades 9-10, so the late bloomers may have less of a chance.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Common App offers an essay choice about what the student did and learned during this upheaval!
Look for those teacher recs and essays to become more important. Plus demonstrated interest and ED.
I heard APUSH is multiple choice only, not FRQ
From where we’re standing, I hope the grades up to this date (or at least the first semester) become the yearly grade. D worked very hard for her grades, so I’d hate for the year to record as pass/fail.
I don’t hope that the current grade becomes the semester grade, because those early grades were not designed to be high-stakes. Some students start out slow and finish strong on the final.
At this point, I’m guessing the grading landscape for this semester will be the wild west. Not sure what that will mean in our house.
@NJWrestlingmom do you know where you sawa that APUSH would be multiple choice only? For my kid with dysgraphia, I sort of wish that would be the case! But I did see the official announcement on Twitter from Trevor Packer which seemed to state that FRQ only was the way they were going for all AP exams.
I am hoping that this past quarter’s grades will NOT be final grades! S21 got a bad concussion at the beginning of Feb and his grades dropped in every course. He’s finally back to normal, and needs to pull those grades up. Plus, it would be unfair to treat a quarter as equal to a semester.
I do think those kids who had great ECs up till now will be better off than those relying on this spring (like in a sport) for something big.
I also think ED will be a harder choice for our cycle, unless there’s a way to get in college visits. If our kids can’t visit schools in session, and decide that’s “the” school for them, I’m not sure we’d let them do ED at the cost of $75k a year.
I am not a Fox News fan, but Tucker Carlson has an interesting article on covid’s Impact on the future of college in the US.
No way our school district will just say that grades will stay as they are now. Parents would revolt. According to our superintendent, they will re-evaluate after spring break and come up with a policy. No matter what they decide, I’m sure colleges will say this semester doesn’t really count. For our district, it might be “fair” to count it since everyone has a Chromebook and internet access but it’s obviously not like that across the country and colleges can’t give advantage to kids from one school district over another.
@nichols51 My daughter’s APUSH teacher sent this “All tests will NOT have any multiple choice questions. They will be creating unique free response questions for you to answer in 45 minutes. I do not know what these look like yet but I will update you when I find out, probably not until April 3rd. The test WILL BE open note / open book.” I believe it is also on the college board website. Hope that helps.
@srwcmw yes, that is in line with what I saw from College Board directly.
I think this AP thing is over the top. How can these possibly replace the real AP test and why would colleges accept it? If they do, it’s just because they want to make sure to get students apply and enroll in their school.
It has been interesting to see how school districts around the country have been dealing with the pandemic. I am grateful that my kid’s school has the resources to shift to rigorous online instruction (loaner hot spots and laptops for all students that need them), will hold the kids accountable, and will continue to calculate grades through the end of the semester. If anything, my D has reported that she is working harder under the new regime! While her college options are now completely up in the air, at least she will be academically prepared.
@havenoidea Do you have a link to the Tucker story?
God I hope not. It would be nice for stressed and grieving teens to just chill and emotionally deal with this for a while. Self-care. No pressure to have to do something amazing during this time of such great stress and uncertainty. Many teens are going to end up losing loved ones. Others will have friends who lose loved ones. It’s enough for them to have to deal emotionally with that.
I think what they are doing with the AP tests is fine under the circumstances. I’m not going to pretend to understand exactly why they had to shorten it so drastically, since it would have been a lot easier to just digitize the exam that they have had written for months (probably) - so there must be a good reason for it.
And they are offering a full refund for kids who choose not to test. They could always take it next year if they wanted to take the full test. My daughter took the World History AP test after sophomore year even though she took World History freshman year. She just used a review book to refresh her memory.