AP tests are absurdly hard

[corruptedmage25]

pwned that ap stat today

 

[Scarpozzi]

What's really sad is that taking AP classes in high school didn't really help me in college. College classes were easy enough that it didn't matter how many things I tested out of. In the grand scheme of things it meant nothing except more studying before I had to.

 

[KillerCharlie]

It doesn't matter, they're curved anyway.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: IAteYourMother

Originally posted by: LongCoolMother

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
I want at least a 4, but I doubt it. Probably a 3, which is kind of shameful in my opinion.

don't worry about it. 3 is considered adequate by the large majority of colleges. Score of 3 is much better than not taking it at all.

But we all know that really, anything below a 5 means that there was no way in hell you could've passed out of an intro college course.

After the test I went into my Com Sci room and Wrote this on the board

Public Class postExam()
{
for(int i = 0:; i < 500; i++)
{
System.out.println( 'I Will not write code on the board in class")
}
}

Of course, my grammar was better, but I would say college level code....

I'm not a Java programmer, but I think I see a syntax error.

Hey, said I just wrote it without paying attention to the code. You can still tell what it does though.

What it does is not run

 

[ppdes]

I remember being happy about getting 5 5s and a 3 on the APs. First week at college I met someone with 7 5s. Nice how a decent college filters out all the idiots at least.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: xtknight
Mostly it was just retarded/inapplicable and needlessly tricky questions, but what else is new... just because I can execute a "for loop" in my head doesn't really mean anything. Looking at other peoples' code is something I loathe. The whole thing shoulda just been free-response, IMO.

I hope this isn't something you plan to do for a living. Being able to read and understand someone's code, however obfuscated it is, is an important skill.

Well, not everyone loves their job.

I didn't mind looking at the Fish Marine Biology Study questions they had in there. It was well-documented and pretty straightforward. So perhaps I made that statement a bit too harsh and quickly. The main thing that annoyed me were the rather impractical questions, such as "which of these for loops has the desired effect?" when next to nobody would write it the backwards way. I wouldn't want to be stuck with horrible code, but if I was I would truly need to revamp it before I could stand working on it any further. If I really have to work with horribly-written code everyday then I suppose that's not a job for me. I somehow doubt that's the case as long as I'm paired with competent programmers.

The Fish class problems in that test were impossible.

I can't believe that I forgot that myColor was a private variable...

They still use the marine bio study! They used that when I took it 3/4 years ago, it was the first year they had Java as the standard language on the test instead of C++.

 

[kevinf2090]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Just took my first one today, Computer Science A ironically enough

Wow. They upped the difficulty 3 fold from previous years. I had no problem with those. But this test comes up and smacks me in the face.

I must have left out 10 questions from 40.

People in the testing room were actually panicking a bit because the first question on the free response was absurdly hard, and nobody could think of the answer to the first question for at least 30 minuets. Almost everyone just turned to question 2.


Now to tackle AP Biology and AP European History...

what a coincidence, i just took ap comp sci. a too. i also thought it was very hard especially the free response. i think i am not going to pass this test

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Originally posted by: kevinf2090

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Just took my first one today, Computer Science A ironically enough

Wow. They upped the difficulty 3 fold from previous years. I had no problem with those. But this test comes up and smacks me in the face.

I must have left out 10 questions from 40.

People in the testing room were actually panicking a bit because the first question on the free response was absurdly hard, and nobody could think of the answer to the first question for at least 30 minuets. Almost everyone just turned to question 2.


Now to tackle AP Biology and AP European History...

what a coincidence, i just took ap comp sci. a too. i also thought it was very hard especially the free response. i think i am not going to pass this test

I thought the opposite. I thought the Multiple choice was very hard, and the free response easier. Except for number one, and number four, which were fairly hard.

2 and 3 were actually fun to code.

And I made the mistake of putting (int).toString()....

 

[SLCentral]

I thought the Stat one I took today was tough. Much tougher then the 1997 and 2002 tests we took in class over the past few weeks. That said, with the exception of two of the open-ended problems, I think I did pretty well. Hoping for a four, but wouldn't mind a 5 either!

Now that AP US test Friday...:/.

 

[esun]

AP tests may seem hard, but they're curved and the curve is generally very low. That means scoring well is actually quite easy. I'll agree there aren't many AP tests I think I could score perfectly on (lacking a photographic memory), but that doesn't mean I couldn't get a 5.

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: SLCentral
I thought the Stat one I took today was tough. Much tougher then the 1997 and 2002 tests we took in class over the past few weeks. That said, with the exception of two of the open-ended problems, I think I did pretty well. Hoping for a four, but wouldn't mind a 5 either!

Now that AP US test Friday...:/.

Yeah that Stats one sucked, I think I did pretty well on the multiple choice but our teacher ran out of time to teach us the last chapter (with all the inclement weather we've had up here in Seattle) so I had to really work my way through the big free response question although the rest of the free response section didn't take much thought.

I've got US history on Friday, I'm really looking forward to that one, I knew most of that stuff before I took the class. English Language next Wednesday is going to be killer though, although I've read enough that in every practice test so far I've known at least one passage and the subject of synthesis question before hand which helps.

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: SLCentral
I thought the Stat one I took today was tough. Much tougher then the 1997 and 2002 tests we took in class over the past few weeks. That said, with the exception of two of the open-ended problems, I think I did pretty well. Hoping for a four, but wouldn't mind a 5 either!

Now that AP US test Friday...:/.

Yeah that Stats one sucked, I think I did pretty well on the multiple choice but our teacher ran out of time to teach us the last chapter (with all the inclement weather we've had up here in Seattle) so I had to really work my way through the big free response question although the rest of the free response section didn't take much thought.

I've got US history on Friday, I'm really looking forward to that one, I knew most of that stuff before I took the class. English Language next Wednesday is going to be killer though, although I've read enough that in every practice test so far I've known at least one passage and the subject of synthesis question before hand which helps.

The big free response one was tough. VERY tough. The rest wasn't too bad though...*knock on wood*. I'm not feeling hot about the US test. I'm worried about getting a bad DBQ topic on something obscure, and I'd be screwed.

Well, hope for the best.

 

[SLCentral]

The AP US test kicked my ass.

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: SLCentral
The AP US test kicked my ass.

I don't know what you are talking about that was a fun test, the multiple choice was pretty straightforward, a couple of the art questions threw me a bit but oh well. The DBQ wasn't a great question but it wasn't exactly difficult either and you could really throw a lot of information into it. I didn't really like either 2 or 3 but neither of them were exactly hard and both 4 and 5 where simple and very easy to work with.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

It really depends on the test. But if you think about it they should be very hard, you are basically attempting to test out of an entire college class.

 

[Dumac]

I just finished AP Calculus AB and AP US History, and I have AP English III to take this wednesday. The Calc multiple choice was incredibly easy, but I fear I may have made a couple of mistake on the free response. The US History was basically the opposite, as I may have gotten a bit of the multiple choice wrong, while I feel I did relatively well on the DBQ and Short Essays.

Wish me luck on English III Wednesday.

 

[Leros]

I'll hop this in thread kind of late and state my opinion. After taking two years of high school computer science, I took the Computer Science A AP and didn't do so well. I got a 3 somehow.

After taking the Intro to CS class in college, I took the Computer Science A exam (they paid us to take it so they could see if it was a good test or not) and got a perfect score.

I think high schools just have crappy computer science teachers.

 

[potoba]

why AP tests again? I am really afraid of those "AP" freshmen...