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Exam Test
Date for AP United States History (2005):
May 6th - Morning Session
The Exams:
The AP Examinations are administered each year
in May and represent the culmination of college-level
work in a given discipline in a secondary school
setting. Rigorously developed by committees of
college and AP high school faculty, the 34 AP
Exams in 19 subject areas test students' ability
to perform at a college level.
Development committees meet throughout the year
to create new exams, which each contain a free-response
section (either essay or problem solving) and
a section of multiple-choice questions. (The only
subject that does not follow this format is AP
Studio Art, which is a portfolio assessment.)
The modern language exams also have a speaking
component, and the AP Music Theory Exam includes
a sight-singing task. The multiple-choice questions
are scored by computer, while the free-response
portions are evaluated by a team of skilled college
professors and high school teachers who meet annually
to score exams in their subject area. The involvement
of college faculty at all levels of exam development
and scoring ensures that the AP Exams truly reflect
college-level achievement. Students who perform
well can receive course credit and/or advanced
standing at thousands of universities worldwide.
AP Exams are created, administered, and scored
with rigor and attention to statistical standards
for reliability and score validity. To ensure
that AP Exams accurately measure college-level
knowledge and performance in each discipline,
the development process includes college curriculum
surveys, pretesting of multiple-choice questions,
and college comparability studies. Further, a
set number of multiple-choice questions are reused
from year to year, making it possible for statisticians
to compensate for differences in difficulty between
exams of different years. Each exam question is
analyzed to ensure that performance on any given
question does not greatly vary between set populations,
such as males, females, whites, African Americans,
and Latinos. On the rare occasions when such analysis
shows that the wording of an exam question might
have contributed to inequitable performance by
one set population, the question is omitted from
the scoring. Finally, those reading the exams
are carefully monitored to ensure that scoring
rubrics are followed and scores are consistent
from reader to reader.
Exam Facts:
• In May 2002, 1,585,516 AP Exams were taken.
• AP Exams are administered at nearly 14,000
schools around the world.
• Since the first AP Exams were given in
1956, more than 10.5 million students have taken
over 16 million AP Exams worldwide.
• On average, 63 percent of the AP Exams
taken receive a grade that is recommended for
college credit, advanced placement, or both. More
than 90 percent of the colleges and universities
in the United States recognize these exam grades.
• More than 1,400 institutions grant a full
year's credit (sophomore standing) to students
presenting satisfactory grades on a stated number
of AP Exams. This represents not just the chance
to save on college tuition and graduate early
from college but also frees up time in a student's
college schedule, allowing a student to take more
advanced courses, to double major, or to explore
additional disciplines and opportunities.
Other AP Exam Information:
Federal
and State AP Exam Assistance Information
AP
Online Exam Ordering Services
AP
Exam Data
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