<p>Just don’t be one of the 1s. If you really study you shouldn’t get a 1.</p>
<p>I can also see getting a 1 on certain exams as someone neglecting an AP exam because they are too cocky about passing. I know plenty of people who are taking AP Bio and APUSH at the same time and most of them are blowing off AP Bio for APUSH because they think it’s too easy. In years past at my school however, the students have had the same feeling and end up not passing the AP Bio exam and get 4’s and 5’s on the APUSH test. </p>
<p>Those are just my observations. I know full well that people get really lazy and don’t see the point in trying and don’t mind getting a 1 or 2 on the tests. Oh well…</p>
<p>In part, it’s easy-teacher-trying-to-please-parents-who-don’t-want-child-to-fail and lack-of-caring. </p>
<p>Scenario: Kid doesn’t study. Asks teacher “What in the world is X?” when teacher thoroughly explained X last class. Teachers feels that they themselves have failed as teachers and go back over the material. Kid who asked questions gets bored and starts having conversation with neighbor. Other kids watch and say nothing, so that they can finish their homework due next period. All amounts to time wasted. </p>
<p>What’s sad that in my school system, the county pays for the exams and I’ve seen kids sleep through the whole thing. At my school, there are a number of students who actually got put in the class and didn’t want to be there. All amounts to bad class experience. So, while teachers at my school kinda sorta advertise the college credit thing to make kids care, the classes serve another purpose-- giving kids a wake-up call on skills-necessary-for-success-in-college.</p>
<p>There’s a lot more. But I’ll stop here.</p>
<p>Like a poster said earlier, we’re all just a bunch of overachievers. asking why so many people get a 1 is similar to saying why people don’t get A’s in their classes. They don’t study, or in rare cases, they study but don’t have good test taking skills.</p>
<p>They dont study simple. No in class or for the ap. Or they had to go to the bathroom before they could answer enough questions to get a score of 2. Or there was an earthquake that make the building collaspe and all the students had to run away. Or a volcano erupted and lava burned the ap exam. Or the student was using his cell phone and the mean proctor made him leave the room without finish the test. Endless possibilies. . .</p>
<p>Parent overrides on kids who really don’t care at all about school, their grades, or the exam. In my school, there are about 70 people taking “AP World History.” I know of, like, five people including myself who are planning to even study for it. Most people just don’t care.</p>
<p>Agree with the people who say that some people are just enrolled in AP’s to get the “A in an AP class”. But I agree most of all with those who say that some people simply don’t care for the exams and hence don’t study for them.</p>
<p>I wish my district paid for us to take AP exams. I would have added Bio and Human Geo just for the sake of shooting for a 3, since those are two APs I would have liked to have taken but didn’t since I did not want to take too many and be overloaded with homework. sigh…</p>
<p>Most kids don’t care about anything school-related, at all. I don’t know why this is shocking. Do you all go to private schools or something?</p>
<p>My school requires everyone taking an AP class to take that AP exam. Most kids just cheat their way through the class, learn literally nothing, sleep through the exam, and get a 1.</p>
<p>ya all the 1’s are mostly from public schools, where the counselors pile under-qualified students into AP classes so the school gets money for having an “impressive” AP program.</p>
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<p>I’m under the impression that most posters here come from well-to-do families, and either attend private schools or highly ranked publics. I’m a private school kid myself – I was at a decent sized international school in Singapore for grades 9 and 10, am currently at a small private prep school in Michigan, and will be transferring to another tiny private in California for grade 12. There is definitely significant focus on preparing students to take and pass AP exams around here, and most teachers would be disappointed if their students didn’t get 4’s or above.</p>
<p>Actually, at our kids’ HS, most kids get 4s & 5s, really. A lot depends on the quality of the instructor & preparation of the student. At the competing prep HS, 3s & lower are more common.</p>
<p>I honestly blame Mississippi and the District of Columbia.</p>
<p>Most students just don’t care, have no idea what is going on in their classes, and they have mediocre teachers.</p>
<p>Out of about 100 AP Statistics students at my school, less than half took the exam. Judging by how our teacher prepared us and how students performed on practice APs, less than a quarter of that passed and probably only about 5 of us scored 4s or 5s. The massive amount of 1s comes from classes like mine.</p>
<p>In my high school’s case the problem is teachers that aren’t prepared to teach AP and students with low motivation and no study habits.</p>
<p>I know bright people who have recieved a one on an exam. Hell, I got a one in World History.</p>
<p>Oh, and another note: most kids at my school are on free/reduced lunch and only have to pay $13 per exam.</p>
<p>80% of my AP Spanish class got 1’s while a few got 5’s. Since this is a college prep school, there shouldn’t have been any reason to get below 3’s (with exception of a few people). The people in the class were incredibly intelligent, but you guys probably don’t care.</p>
<p>After the first part of the exam, moving on to the vocal part, we figured out that Collegeboard sent us the wrong audio CDs. Since we had mismatched content, we couldnt take the second half of the AP. We returned two weeks later to finish the second half of the exam and noticed an incredibly strange form code (for 2009, they gave us 2008 Form 2B-Q or something like that). For the written portion, they forced us to use pencils instead of pens as indicated in the instructions. The format of the exam also had changed, so many of us were caught unprepared for a certain timing error. On the oral exam, we recorded onto CDs, fine. However, instead of playing through the conversation twice, it was only played once (one idiot started talking and recording, setting off everyone else to do the same). I stared in confusion for a good 10 seconds before I spat out some garbage into the microphone (recording).</p>
<p>Rumor has it (from our teacher) that the exam was scored manually. I imagine that some graders stumbled on the incorrect scoring guide for some of our exams. Despite our constant complaints, they didn’t do anything else to remedy the issue. I know this doesnt account for all the 1’s received, but I suspect that the accuracy of these exams are poorer than they initally seem, especially given the fact that proctors aren’t aware of full testing procedure.</p>
<p>Wow, that really sucks invgamma.</p>
<p>Most of the kids taking AP’s really have no business taking the test.</p>
<p>Just because you get a 100 in the class does not mean that you can actually perform on an AP level.</p>
<p>There is a ton of grade inflation within many schools causing kids to take tests they are not ready for.</p>
<p>It’s like that kid with an 80ish GPA thinking he can get into Harvard and making the admission rates super low.</p>
<p>Truth is, most of the people applying have no business applying in the first place.</p>