[dbcurtis]

I had a conversation with a prof from Harvey Mudd and another prof from somewhere else who was an AP calc grader. The HMC prof said they quit giving credit for 5's because not all recipients of 5's could do the work. The grader commented that he could understand how, as the range of 5's is quite broad. My take-away was that there is insufficient granularity at the high end.

[JamesBarney]

I also wonder if there is also a difference in focus between your university and the AP exam. For instance my highschool allowed use of TI-89 and focused heavily on concepts and word problems. This was similar to the AP exam, so I was top of my class in Calculus and scored a 5 on the AP exam. However in college I struggled in post BC calculus like diff-EQ because they put a strong emphasis on differentiating and integrating by hand and banned all but the simplest calculator.

[mturmon]

I had that same conversation with a prof from Occidental College.

In this case it was more like griping that people who had placed out of freshman Calc because of AP did not, in many cases, understand Calculus. They knew enough to pass the Calc AP exam, but they had a very shallow understanding, so they couldn't use their knowledge in applications.

He said they really hated the push to get so many students to place out via AP, because it was only hurting them later.

[jimhefferon]

> hurting them later

We have some students with tight programs (for instance, future elementary educators) where the extra course is a big help, so there is that on the other hand.

[InclinedPlane]

Also, in the last several years it's become more and more common for AP classes to simply "teach to the test". They pump our students who can get 5s on the test but have little practical knowledge of the subject.

[zardo]

I was shocked I got 5 in physics, doing well in multiple choice made up for skipping two of the five word problems. It seems weird to have the best possible score not require answering all the questions correctly.

[epmatsw]

To be fair, a 5 on something like Calc BC means you got more than like 60% credit. It's not surprising that someone on the low end of that would struggle.