In the United States, Advanced Placement Biology (also known as AP Biology or AP Bio) is a course and examination offered by the College Board to high school students as an opportunity to earn placement credit for a college-level biology course.
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The Course
This course is offered to highly motivated students who wish to pursue their interests in the biological/ biochemistry sciences. The college board recommends a successful completion of high school biology and high school chemistry, [1] before commencing AP biology. But the actual prerequisites vary from school to school and from state to state. Many schools, for example, require no background in biology to take the course. There are critics of the AP program that believe that the high school science curriculum does not adequately prepare students with a background college-level scientific studies and that students who have studied AP Biology do not perform as well in college science classes as might be expected of someone who successfully completed an AP course in the subject matter. [2]
Topics covered
Topics covered by this course include:
- Anatomy & Physiology
- Biochemistry
- Biodiversity
- Botany
- The Cell
- Developmental biology
- Ecology
- Genetics
- Molecular Biology
- Origin of life
- Population Biology
- Evolution
- Molecular Genetics
- Taxonomy
The exam
The AP test for this course consists of two sections. Section I, administered over a period of 1 hour 20 minutes (80 minutes), consists of 100 multiple-choice questions[3]. Section II, which lasts 1 hour and 30 minutes, consists of 4 essay prompts to be answered comprehensively by the student[3]. A mandated 10 minute reading period is held prior to beginning to write the four essays. The 10 minutes provided for the reading period are NOT included in the total 1 hour and 30 minutes allowed for writing the essays; during this time, a student may record notes in the exam booklet containing the essay prompt, though the booklet used to record official essay responses must remain sealed until the reading period is completed. Overall, the exam thus lasts 180 minutes, or three hours.
The exam grade is weighted unevenly between Section I and Section II, with 60% of the score dependent on success in Section I and the remaining 40% determined by results from Section II.
Grade distribution
In the 2007 administration, 144,796 students took the exam from 8,486 schools. In the 2008 administration, the overall percentages of the higher scores (namely 3s to 5s) dropped significantly overall while scores of 1s climbed more than two-fold. The mean score was a 3.04 for the 2007 exam, however for the 2008 exam, the average score totaled at 2.68. Most colleges award credit in an introductory biology course for a score of 3 or higher. Higher tier schools generally only accept a score of 4 or 5.
The grade distribution for 2007 was:
| Score | Percent |
|---|---|
| 5 | 19.3% |
| 4 | 20.3% |
| 3 | 21.2% |
| 2 | 23.2% |
| 1 | 15.9% |
The grade distribution for 2008 was:[4]
| Score | Percent |
|---|---|
| 5 | 18.3% |
| 4 | 15.7% |
| 3 | 16.1% |
| 2 | 15.3% |
| 1 | 34.6% |
The grade distribution for 2009 was:[5]
| Score | Percent |
|---|---|
| 5 | 19.5% |
| 4 | 15.5% |
| 3 | 15.8% |
| 2 | 15.1% |
| 1 | 34.0% |
Commonly Used Textbooks
- Biology (Campbell and Reece, ISBN 978-0805371468)
References
External links
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