The Advanced Placement Program, commonly known as Advanced Placement, or AP, is a United States and Canada-based program that offers high school students the opportunity to receive university credit for their work during high school. High school - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Students attending a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology The word student is etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb stŭdērĕ, meaning to direct ones zeal at; hence a student is one who directs zeal at a subject. ... A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master, and doctor) in a variety of subjects. ...

The non-profit College Board, which has run the program since 1955, develops and maintains courses in various subject areas, supports those who teach the courses, supports universities as they define their policies related to AP grades, and develops and coordinates the administration of annual AP examinations. These activities are funded through fees charged to students taking AP Exams. The College Board is a non-profit examination board in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB). ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In 2002, over one million high school students participated in AP courses; over 90% of them took the corresponding AP exam. Many high schools offer AP courses, though the College Board allows the home-schooled and others who have not taken a course at a high school to take the exam. Exams cost $82 each. Until the 2005 exams, exams in the same category could be taken together and only paid for once. For example, both economics, or both physics, or both government exams, for $82 per set. Starting in 2006, each exam costs $82. Financial aid is still available for students with demonstrated need. For the Cusco album, see 2002 (album). ... Thomas Edison attended compulsory school for only three months, after which he was taught at home by his mother and a tutor. ...

In some high schools with an exam exemption policy, an AP Exam can be taken in place of the school's final exam and the final grade given to the student in that case is the final quarter/semester grade without the exam.

History

In May 1951, a group of educators from three of America's elite prep schools (Phillips Academy, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the Lawrenceville School) and three of the country's most prestigious colleges (Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University) convened to discuss the best use of the final two years of high school and the first two years of college. This committee published a final report, General Education in School and College (Harvard University Press, 1952), which led to the establishment of the AP Exams. 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... Phillips Academy (also known as Andover, Phillips Andover, or simply PA) is a coed prep school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. ... The Academy Building Phillips Exeter Academy (also called Exeter, Phillips Exeter, or PEA) is a co-educational independent boarding school for grades 9-12, located on 471. ... The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational, independent boarding school for grades 9-12 located on 700 acres in the historic village of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, five miles southwest of Princeton. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ... The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. ...

Exams

Each May, participating Canadian, American, and some international educational institutions offer the Advanced Placement examinations, the natural focal point of the Advanced Placement program. All but one of the AP exams combine multiple-choice questions with a free-response section in either essay or problem-solving format. (AP Studio Art, the sole exception, requires students to submit a portfolio for review.) // Finance Main article portfolio (finance) In finance, a portfolio is a collection of investments held by an institution or a private individual. ...

Each June, the free-response sections and Studio Art portfolios are scored by thousands of university faculty and Advanced Placement instructors at a number of Advanced Placement Readings in locations throughout the United States. These free-response sections are scored according to rubrics designed for the specific prompts. Before the readers arrive, a number of people from the Advanced Placement Program's Reading Leadership randomly select a number of free response booklets and match these booklets against the preliminary question rubrics designed by the test development committee when they wrote the question. If, based on the sampling, the students did not perform as well as expected, the scoring rubric is made easier. If, based on the sampling, the students did better than expected, the scoring rubric is made more difficult. In addition, the Reading Leadership attempts to find what they believe epitomizes the best example of a free response that should be scored at each score level (usually the free responses are scored on a scale of 0 to 9) for purposes of training the readers. It usually takes about one week for the readers to score all of the free responses sections for one exam.

The exams themselves are not tests of the students' mastery of the course material in a traditional sense. Rather, the students themselves set the grading rubrics and the scale for the "AP Grades" of each exam. When the AP Reading is over for a particular exam, the free response scores are combined with the results of computer-scored multiple-choice questions based upon a previously announced weighting. The Chief Reader (a college or university faculty member selected by ETS and The College Board) then meets with members of ETS and sets the cutoff scores for each AP Grade. The Chief Reader's decision is based upon what percentage of students earned each AP Grade over the previous three years, how students did on multiple-choice questions that are used on the test from year to year, how he or she viewed the overall quality of the answers to the free response questions, how university students who took the exam as part of experimental studies did, and how students performed on different parts of the exam. No one outside of ETS is allowed to find out a student's raw score on an AP Exam and the cutoff scores for a particular exam are only released to the public if that particular exam is released in total (this happens on a staggered schedule and occurs approximately once every five years for each exam). The AP Grades that are reported to students, high schools, colleges, and universities in July are on AP's five-point scale:

• 5: Extremely well-qualified
• 4: Well-qualified
• 3: Qualified
• 2: Possibly qualified
• 1: No recommendation

Many colleges and universities in the U.S. grant credits or advanced placement based on AP grades; those in over twenty other countries do likewise. Policies vary by institution, but most schools require a score of 3 or higher on any given exam for credit to be granted or course pre-requisites to be waived. Colleges may also take AP grades into account when deciding which students to accept, though this is not part of the official AP program.

Subjects

The College Board offers 35 advanced placement exams including:

• Art History
• Biology
• Calculus AB: both differential and integral calculus
• Calculus BC: superset of AB, covering almost all of college single-variable calculus such as series and an introduction to differential equations
• Chemistry
• Chinese Language and Culture: new course; first exam in May 2007
• Comparative Government and Politics
• Computer Science A: object-oriented programming methodology; switched from C++ to Java beginning with the 2003-4 year; includes studying the Marine Biology Simulation, a case study developed for the AP Program
• Computer Science AB: superset of A with a more formal and in-depth study of algorithms, data structures, design, and abstraction; also switched from C++ to Java beginning with the 2003-2004 academic year; also includes study of Marine Biology Simulation
• English Language and Composition
• English Literature and Composition
• Environmental Science
• European History: covers the history of Europe from 1450 AD to the present.
• French Language
• French Literature
• German Language
• Human Geography
• Italian Language and Culture (new course; first exam in May 2006)
• Japanese Language and Culture (new course; first exam in May 2007)
• Latin Virgil, based on the Aeneid
• Latin Literature, based on Catullus and one of the following: Ovid, Cicero, Horace
• Macroeconomics
• Microeconomics
• Music Theory and Composition
• Physics B: intended for those pursuing majors in the life sciences, premedicine, and some applied sciences. Physics B tests a wider range of topics than Physics C, but with less mathematical rigor.
• Physics C: intended for those pursuing majors in the physical sciences or engineering. The Physics C test requires the use of calculus, while the level B test does not. Because of its greater mathematical rigor, it does not test as many areas of physics; only mechanics and electricity and magnetism are tested in two separate exams, neglecting, for example, areas such as optics.
• Psychology
• Russian Language and Culture (new course; first exam date unknown)
• Spanish Language
• Spanish Literature
• Statistics
• Studio Art 2-D
• Studio Art 3-D
• Studio Art Drawing
• United States History
• United States Government and Politics
• World History

AP Biology is a course offered by the College Board to high school students in the United States to earn credit for a college-level biology course. ... There are two Advanced Placement Calculus courses, AP Calculus AB and AP Calculus BC. // AP Calculus AB A test that Ambika is bound to get a 0 on. ... In mathematics, the derivative is defined as the instantaneous rate of change of a function. ... In calculus, the integral of a function is a generalization of area, mass, volume and total. ... Integral and differential calculus is a central branch of mathematics, developed from algebra and geometry. ... There are two Advanced Placement Calculus courses, AP Calculus AB and AP Calculus BC. // AP Calculus AB A test that Ambika is bound to get a 0 on. ... In mathematics, a series is often represented as the sum of a sequence of terms. ... In mathematics, a differential equation is an equation in which the derivatives of a function appear as variables. ... AP Chemistry is a course offered by the College Board allows students in United States high schools to earn credit for one or more semesters of an equivalent introductory chemistry laboratory course. ... Using the Java language, students explore in-depth work with text files and arrays, abstract data types, recursion, searching and sorting algorithms, and program efficiency. ... In computer science, object-oriented programming, OOP for short, is a computer programming paradigm. ... C++ (generally pronounced see plus plus) is a general-purpose programming language. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... The Marine Biology Simulation Case Study (MBSCS) is a program written in Java for use with the Advanced Placement Computer Science A and AB examinations. ... Case studies involve a particular method of research. ... Advanced Placement (AP) is the term used to describe high school classes that are taught at a college level. ... Flowcharts are often used to represent algorithms. ... A binary tree, a simple type of branching linked data structure. ... In computer science, abstraction is a mechanism and practice to reduce and factor out details so that one can focus on few concepts at a time. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Marine Biology Simulation Case Study (MBSCS) is a program written in Java for use with the Advanced Placement Computer Science A and AB examinations. ... The Advanced Placement Program (also Advanced Placement, AP) is a United States program that offers high school students the opportunity to receive college credit for their work during high school. ... This course is for foreign language students interested in college-level courses or gaining advanced college credit. ... The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BCE (between 29 and 19 BCE) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. ... Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. ... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... Marcus Tullius Cicero (IPA: ;) (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was an orator and statesman of Ancient Rome, and is generally considered the greatest Latin orator and prose stylist. ... Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (December 8, 65 BC - November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading lyric poet in Latin. ... Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology is the science of life (from the Greek words bios = life and logos = word). ... Applied science is the exact science of applying knowledge from one or more natural scientific fields to practical problems. ... Mathematics is commonly defined as the study of patterns of structure, change, and space; more informally, one might say it is the study of figures and numbers. Mathematical knowledge is constantly growing, through research and application, but mathematics itself is not usually considered a natural science. ... Physical science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science, and science (generally), that study non-living systems, in contrast to the biological sciences. ... Engineering is the application of scientific and technical knowledge to solve human problems. ... Integral and differential calculus is a central branch of mathematics, developed from algebra and geometry. ... Mechanics refers to: a craft relating to machinery (from the Latin mechanicus, from the Greek mechanikos, meaning one skilled in machines), or any of a range of disciplines in physics and engineering. ... Electromagnetism is the physics of the electromagnetic field: a field, encompassing all of space, composed of the electric field and the magnetic field. ... Table of Opticks, 1728 Cyclopaedia Optics (appearance or look in ancient Greek) is a branch of physics that describes the behavior and properties of light and the interaction of light with matter. ... The AP United States History exam is part of the College Boards Advanced Placement Program. ... AP United States Government and Politics is a college-level course which surveys the structure and function of American government and politics that begins with an analysis of the Constitution, the foundation of the American political system. ...

An expanding curriculum

In 2003, trustees of the College Board approved a plan for new courses in Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The first of these was announced several months later: an Advanced Placement exam in "Italian Language and Culture" will be the first new exam to be offered, starting in this testing year. 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The College Board is a non-profit examination board in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB). ...

AP Scholar Designations

Each year, the AP program recognizes students who have performed exceptionally well on AP examinations. Exams are taken in May and awards are usually granted in September. The following designations can be earned: Wiktionary has related dictionary definitions, such as: September September is the ninth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with 30 days. ...

*Note: "All AP exams taken" refers to all AP exams taken in any year. It is not restricted to the year the award is issued in. A state of the United States (a U.S. state) is any one of the fifty states (four of which officially favor the term commonwealth) which, along with the District of Columbia, form the United States of America. ... ... The United States Department of Defense, abbreviated DoD or DOD and sometimes called the Defense Department, is a civilian Cabinet organization of the United States government. ... The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) is a civilian agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. ...

AP International Diploma

The AP program also awards the AP International Diploma for Overseas Study (APID) to students who have applied to colleges outside of the United States that have completed a sequence of AP exams with satisfactory grades. In particular, a student must earn a grade of 3 or better on five or more AP exams in three of the following five areas:

Composition deals with the bits and pieces that make up things. ... Literature is literally acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning an individual written character (letter)). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction...

See also

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Advanced Placement

• Education in the United States
• International Baccalaureate Note: However, not every public or private school offers IB courses in the US.

Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a sister project to Wikipedia and is part of the Wikimedia Foundation, begun on July 10, 2003. ... Educational oversight Secretary Deputy Secretary U.S. Department of Education Margaret Spellings Eugene W. Hickok National education budget $69. ... The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a group of three educational programmes and their respective examinations, as established by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO). ...

References

• AP Research Technical Manual - Can only be accessed through The College Board's website for AP professionals

External links

• The College Board's AP website for students and parents
• The College Board's website for AP professionals