AP Music Theory Exam Percentiles

[jam8086]

Does anyone know what the percentiles have been in the past for getting a 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 on the AP Music Theory Exam? I remember last year when I took AP Calculus my teacher had a list of the percentiles and getting a 5 only required getting something like 60% right.  Also, has anyone taken this exam and thought they bombed, but it turned out they actually did very well, or vice versa?

[allchopin]

Didn't take the exam, but I know that at my university, a 4 is required for credit transfer.  That means to me that it is one of the easier exams and probably yields higher scores - not positive though.

[smibrojo]

A percentile score isn't the same as percent correct.

A percentile score compares your score to the scores of others taking the test.  A score in the 10th percentile is higher than 10% of the test takers and lower than 90% of the test takers.  The hypothetical 'top of the curve' is at the 50th percentile with half of the others above and half below.

Find out if your calc. teacher's list was percentages or percentiles (and get the calc. teacher to explain it!)

Sorry I can't be more helpful answering your question though.  I'm glad AP hadn't been invented when I was in high school.

[squinchy]

Oh-jive.

I think they administer the exam to unwitting (or very happy) high schoolers.

Then they give it to a bunch of first year college students who had just taken the corresponding class. (Not sure which universities, or how they sample this.)

They separate the kids by what grade they actually got in the class, and then look at what they got on the AP. Some sharp divisions get drawn, and we get our 1-5 scores.

Not sure what the percentage cut-offs are for AP Music Theory, but the AP Stat prep books all made a big deal of 108/150, or 72% for getting a 5.

Percentage: If I get 79 questions out of 100 right on my exam, I score 79%.
Percentile: On a different exam, I get 90. There are 100 kids in my class, and only 8 did better than me. I am in the (100 -- 92th percentile, in terms of my class.

[indutrial]

I took the AP test in high school and I'm glad that I never knew the percentile ahead of time. Why worry about that sh*t at all. Just concentrate on the test material, ear training, 4-part writing. Wondering if you've gotten enough right so far is not something you should be thinking about when you take the test. I actually scored a 5 on this. It transferred to college credit for me but the college did not let it substitute any specific course. Essentially, it was just filler credit, but that didn't matter since I wasn't a music major.