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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. 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. In some schools, a student needs to show an exemplary record in freshman and sophomore year courses to be permitted to take advanced placement courses. Also, 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. 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.) 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:
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:
An expanding curriculum In " will be the first new exam to be offered, starting in this testing year. 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:
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: SEE ALSO
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