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Opinions of Writing Administrators

‹ Institutions with a cut-off above a score of 3 | AP Cut-offs | Brief bibliography on AP validity ›

Some experts in composition defend an AP cut-off at no less than 4, for waiving of first-year composition requirement or for first-year composition credit. Source is The Writing Program Administrators listserve [WPA-L], August 2003.

(1) My daughter’s AP American History class was told by their teacher, who is also the chair of the History Dept at the high school, that only a 4 or 5 on the AP test would be accepted by any “quality” university. Apparently, the 4 or 5, then, is the common assumption for AP tests, and students are told this by teachers in every AP class at the high school.

(2) This takes me back a bit. I think ASU still accepts only 4 or 5 for credit. When I was WPA, we got some pressure to give some credit for 3′s. I’m not sure about the current stats, but then about 20% of the students who took the test scored 4 or 5 while over 60% scored 3, 4, or 5. That was a sign. You can certainly see why ETS would like us to give credit for 3′s. But we actually read the AP essays that were awarded a score of 3, ands then we understood why the big jump from 20 to 60% and we decided that 3 level writing did not merit college credit. The essays were pretty weak.

What I don’t really know is how students who earn 3′s on the AP actually do in our composition courses. I suspect that they do quite well. Students who take AP courses tend to be high school achievers who are reasonably conscientious students. They are more likely than many other students to be successful in college. That does not mean, however, that they would not benefit from our composition courses. It means only that they would do well. I remember someone around here once proposed that we should identify the profile of the students who got A’s in ENG 101 and exempt students with that profile from the course. I have never heard that proposal made for CHEM 101. The logic is interesting. Students who do well in a course do not need the course. That would make college a quick trip for a 4.0 graduate.

The very idea that such logic would be applied to first-year composition suggests that others do not view a comp course as a learning experience but simply as a test of competency already acquired.

(3) David’s point is crucial and bears repeating. An equivalency exam such as AP must use the OUTCOMES of a course as criteria, not just some general ability measure. That’s why you can’t use the same test for both placement and equivalency. Even perfect understanding of algebra (good preparation for calculus) doesn’t mean you know calculus. If your program can’t distinguish good preparation for college comp from completion of the goals of college comp, your course is a real problem.

(4) At DePaul, we accept a score of 4 or 5 on the AP English Language and Composition examination to waive with credit the first of two required FY writing courses. A student who presents a score of 4 or 5 on the AP English Literature and Composition examination gets credit for English 120, an elective Introduction to Literature course.

As the incoming chief reader for the English Language and Composition exam (and therefore the target of a good bit of animadversion from my colleagues in rhetoric and composition), I unofficially support colleges’ and universities’ holding the line at scores of 4 and 5, and not accepting a 3 for credit and/or waiver, which is what the College Board wants.

Two more thoughts from someone who’s been working with the AP English Language and Composition Program since 1992:

First, ETS doesn’t want colleges and universities to accept scores of 3; the College Board, which “owns” the AP Program, does. ETS is the subcontractor here—it only oversees the development and scoring of AP exams. The College Board, which is a very different organization from ETS and becoming even more so, has for many years been trying to advocate for a score of 3 as “qualified” for advanced placement. Second, as I’ve pointed out before, the name of the program is Advanced Placement, not Advanced Exemption, and this distinction has implications for both students and college/university writing programs. Students need to see instruction in writing as a continuing education, and those earning scores of 4 and 5 need to go into more advanced, more challenging rhetoric/writing courses. Colleges and universities, for their part, need to offer an array of writing courses as entry points into this continuing education for students with varying writing abilities. So long as first-year composition is a one-size-fits-all monolith, diligent students are going to try to avoid it.

(5) The University of Washington has stopped accepting any AP score for composition credit. We are giving general humanities credit for scores of 4 or 5 on either or both exams, but nothing that includes writing. It seems like a good compromise to us. Students do typically get a meatier course in AP, but . . . I’d still rather have a high school teacher not go through contortions trying to fit American literature into AP Language and Composition.

As for the recruiting issue, I suspect that most state universities are in the same position as we are: far more qualified students than we can possibly accept. So until the gremlins and demons in our various state legislatures agree to teach the baby boomlet, perhaps recruiting won’t be as big an issue.

Our admissions director also tells me that some colleges are proposing “banking” AP type credit, allowing students to wait until after their first year to see if they want to use the credit. For calculus here, for example, it turns out that students track differently depending on whether they intend to go into the biological sciences or math-based sciences and accordingly take the appropriate track. AP Calculus courses don’t typically address the different disciplinary communities using college level math (um. . . sort of like writing). One of the problems we’ve run into here in WA is legislators who are unhappy with students who are graduating with more than the minimum credit hours. We had a bill this year, which thankfully died, to charge 5th year students the full state support plus tuition. Those “extra” hours available from AP, CLEP, dual credit and the like may come back and bite us.

(6) When I was at Michigan, we cooperated with ACT folk to compare the correlation of ACT scores vs our placement test scores as a predictor of success in FY Composition. Basically, the ACT scores were useless as predictors, since the average was above 25. The range of ACT scores was just too small for them to predict performance in FY Comp

(7) Seton Hall University restricted the acceptable AP cutoff scores to 4 and 5 a few years ago when we realized that the score of 3 did not guarantee an acceptably high level of achievement. While Seton Hall has recently entered the ranks of Tier II institutions, it doesn’t pretend to be Princeton or Williams. The point is that even a somewhat less competitive school like ours felt the need to raise the bar because those students with 3′s looked pretty much like the rest of the College English I students

(8) We did a study here last year that looked at the writing of students in their sophomore year who were enrolled in a history of civ course. We found that students with AP score of 3 who did not take FYC wrote significantly worse than students with 3 who had taken FYC. We also found that students with AP scores of 4 and 5 who didn’t take FYC wrote significantly worse than students with 4 and 5 who took FYC. We interpret this to mean that taking FYC adds to a student’s ability to write. We hope to use this study to persuade our admin to raise our cut-off score from 3 to 4. Right now we accept 3, but we shouldn’t. A score of 3 on the AP exam (either one) is nothing to boast about.

(9) During the years that I was at Ohio State, we managed to change the AP rule so that students who would have placed out of first year writing instead were highly recommended into a special first year seminar: students were generally very happy to take that course and, of course, profited from it a great deal. I am all in favor of AP courses, but they are NOT the equivalent of a college-level writing course IMHO.

Two years ago, on the advice of the University Writing Review Committee, the Stanford Faculty Senate voted to drop AP for placement into writing; as of this year, all incoming students will take one writing class in their first year, a second writing writing course by the end of the second year, and then a writing in the majors class (and usually a capstone course of some kind).

(10) I believe that the University of Wyoming accepts only scores of 4 or 5. We made this change several years ago, and I haven’t heard that we’ve gone back to a score of 3.

As a former scorer of AP exams, I strongly think that it should be a 4 or 5, not a 3. Of course, I also think that all college students should take a college writing course soon in ther college career, no matter what their AP scores from high school.

(11) I recently upped our AP cut-off score to 4 or 5 for FY exemption at U Colorado-Boulder. In reviewing the AP curriculum and exam, I found that students in Colorado who scored well were likely to be proficient in a typical, literature-based English course but not a writing course that emphasizes critical inquiry and research across disciplines and methodologies, as our FY course does.

(12) Drew University cuts at 4 on the AP English Literature and Language exams. Students with a 4 or a 5 on either exam exempt composition and earn four credits toward graduation (one course worth). In the spirit of David’s reminder that this is a placement exam not an exemption exam, this fall my department will propose that exemption be granted only to students earning a 4 or 5 on the English language exam. Students with a 4 or 5 on the literature exam will simply be placed in a more advanced class. We may negotiate that to an exemption for a 5 on either exam, although I don’t see why a literature exam should exempt students when the composition course it replaces is not a literature course. Students coming out of most AP programs lack skills in research and source use and general critical and analytical thinking, and are therefore not as prepared for college-level writing as students who have taken a college composition course. And a 3 is certainly not an indication of college-level proficiency.

(13) In practice, almost all of the students expecting AP or transfer credit take our placement exam, since the AP scores and transcript do not arrive until July. The results over the years remain fairly consistent. Assuming these students do receive the credit, the profile remains: about 5% would have placed out of our first-year comp course, about 80% would have been placed in our regular EN 101, and about 15% would have been placed in our 101 Intensive (developmental sections). This last group is given liberal arts elective credit, but still required to take our EN 101.

‹ Institutions with a cut-off above a score of 3 | AP Cut-offs | Brief bibliography on AP validity ›