Eyes on a 5: Conquering the APES Exam

The APES Exam May 2, morning session Selected Response Section questions - 90 minutes - 60% of exam grade Constructed Response Section - 4 questions - 90 minutes - 40% of exam grade

What’s the Point? To determine what students know Who deserves college credit AP Scores: 5 extremely well qualified 4 well qualified 3 qualified 2 possibly qualified 1 no recommendation

Before the Test Get a good night’s sleep Eat a nourishing breakfast Dress comfortably in layers Get to the test site early

The Selected Response Section AKA Multiple Choice

Some questions are very easy- most students are expected to get these right Some questions are very difficult- few students are expected to get these right Most questions are in between these extremes Questions are NOT arranged in order of difficulty

Strategies Go through the entire test and answer the questions you know first Skip the harder questions the first time through Go back and work on the more difficult questions Be careful to put your answers in the correct spaces on your answer sheet!

Scoring Each correct answer = 1 point Each wrong or blank = 0 points Calculation of score: Number correct x.9 Maximum Possible Score = 90 points

Should you guess? YES YES YES There is no longer a penalty for guessing! Do NOT leave answers blank!

How do SR scores relate to AP scores? 100% of students who got above 75 points (84%) got a % of students who got between 61 and 75 points (66% - 83%) got a 4 or 5 70% of students who got between 46 and 60 points (51% -66%) got a 4 or 5

Free Response Questions AKA The Essays

One question is quantitative/data based One question is document based Two are synthesis and evaluation questions Types of Questions

Strategies Read all four questions before you start writing Answer the questions you know most about first Budget your time- you have about 22 minutes for each question

Read questions carefully. Figure out exactly what you are being asked to do. Underline the verbs. Read all of the parts of each question. You may know very little about parts A and B, but everything about parts C and D. Answer each part in order. Label the answers “A”, “B”, etc. in your answer. Show all work when calculations are called for. Remember “green sheets” are not graded.

Don’t be too general. Throwing out terms like “pollution” without further explanation will not get points. Only give the number of responses asked for. Don’t erase- cross out instead. Learn to use scientific notation and dimensional analysis. Think outside the box!

Scoring of CR Each question is worth 10 points. Some points are easier to get than others. Each question’s score is multiplied by 1.5 and the scores are summed up to get the weighted score. This is added to the SR score to find the total points earned out of 150 possible.

2015 Composite Exam Scores and the Resulting Grades 91 – 150 (61% - 100%) = 5 70 – 90 (47% - 60%) = 4 58 – 69 (39% - 46%) = 3 45 – 57 (30% - 38%) = 2 0 – 44 (< 30%) = 1

Have Confidence in Yourself You CAN Do It!