Did these Kids find a way to cheat the AP test or are they the worlds smartest?

This is an Article about the kid in the class who got a Perfect Score on both the Micro and Macro AP Econ exams

he is going to Harvard and has gotten a perfect score on at least 12 AP exams across a wide variety of subjects, winning the national award/scholarship for the highest scoring student on AP math/science exams

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22743800/stellar-harker-school-student-wins-siemens-award-advanced

Definitely possible without any foul play. I got a 5 on the AP Micro exam as a senior, and I am of only above average intellect, but nothing special. I would call myself SEC state school material. I had a great, dedicated teacher who had taught the subject for a number of years. I also worked my tail off in preparation for the test, which itself does not have a reputation for being a particularly defficult AP exam in the first place. Additionally, this is one of the easier AP exams that everyone takes. So passing it in the first place with a 3 is not hard because a lot of people just ride the curve due to the number of people taking that class who have no business doing so in the first place. Assuming perfect score means 5 and not not every question correct, then I believe it.

Taco Truck wrote:

This is AP Economics which is kind of a joke. If it was AP Calc or Physics, that is something else.

AP Calc??? what are you 5 years old?

More than half of the kids in my class (30) got 5's on their AP, which leads me to believe a perfect score is not *just* getting a 5. Also, they curve the AP to have roughly 20% of the kids in the nation to get 5's on it, not nearly close to the 33 people mentioned on getting a perfect score.

Score distributions can be found here for all AP Tests:

http://www.totalregistration.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=487%3A2013-ap-exam-score-distributions&catid=18%3Amisc

If you randomly selected students from the population of test taker, the odds of choosing 15 that had a five on the exam would be 1/71,297,275,998. I would consider that strong evidence that the class in question is not a random collection of test takers...

Whether the students are more intelligent, the education was superior, they cheated, or some combination thereof cannot be determined from the test scores. See "confounding"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

Why be so impressed? Rote learning is what they teach in high school since physiologically the human brain hasn't matured to the degree required for independent thought. AP won't get you through the freshman year given professors now change every exam since they know about PDF answerbooks of even and odd questions, and websites with full suites of textbook answers. Remember, professors were once students too back in the day before flushed toilets, electric lights, and cars.

Being an educator I had to check this out... And these kids are getting 100% of the questions correct and not just 5's - so it is very impressive on the part of these students!

Google is your friend.

news.harker.org/harker-racks-up-11-perfect-advanced-placement-scores-best-in-world/

From this article: "The College Board recently announced that The Harker School earned the distinction this year of having the largest number of perfect scores of any school in the world." It goes on to list how it was a big feat; however, the article is published by the school itself, so it made me suspicious.

Option 1) The school has been trying really hard to get national/world recognition to continue to attract top student talent - and succeeding.

Option 2) They are over-inflating what they've done to falsely attract more students.

So I searched 'Davis' + 'perfect score campaign' and the results showed other articles talking about perfect scores in much better details (and showed discussions how it is a much bigger deal than just getting a 5)

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/15/local/la-me-perfect-ap-exam-score-20131114

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_24546695/calif-student-earns-rare-perfect-score-ap-exam

So congrats to these kids. It looks like they worked their butts off to get their perfect scores, and I hope they continue to be successful!

he got 5s not perfect scores on most of them. 5s are easy. Perfect scores are not

Realism wrote:

This is an Article about the kid in the class who got a Perfect Score on both the Micro and Macro AP Econ exams

he is going to Harvard and has gotten a perfect score on at least 12 AP exams across a wide variety of subjects, winning the national award/scholarship for the highest scoring student on AP math/science exams

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22743800/stellar-harker-school-student-wins-siemens-award-advanced

dddd wrote:

he got 5s not perfect scores on most of them. 5s are easy. Perfect scores are not

I would like to see you take 12 AP Tests and get a 5 on every one, should be easy right?

Is that a joke? Absolutely impossible. Blatant cheating at work here. No doubt about it. You certainly don't have to be incredibly smart to get a 5 on any of the AP exams, but a perfect score?? Did someone not just say the odds are like 1 in 70 billion? So, by that logic I have nearly 300x better odds at winning the mega millions? Perfect score means 100% on the test. These tests are not designed to actually receive a grade of "A" on (90-100). That's why for most of the tests a 5 is around a 75% - because the tests are DESIGNED so that NO ONE gets a perfect score, which is why so few people do it. Absolutely absurd that anyone could suggest that this is possible without cheating, no matter how easy the exam may be.

The odds of running a sub 14:00 5k have to be up over 1:500k for the us population . So when the olympic trials go off and 15 guys run that fast, is it a 1 in a billion event or did miscount the laps?This school sample is nothing like the general test taking population. 87% of these kids got 5's (about 5x greater than the national average). Now only like 30 kids had perfect scores so having 10 in one classroom is a strecth. But another question to think about is how many kids had almost perfect scores (missed 1 question). You are probably looking at a population that is 10-20x as big. It might turn out that most of those kids missed the same couple of questions and that this teacher had just happened to cover that material.Or sure the school (or kids) could have cheated. That is a heck of a lot of risk for a good press release. That kid didn't get into harvard because of his perfect score. But he sure as heck would get kicked out because of cheating.

Another Option wrote:

Score distributions can be found here for all AP Tests:

http://www.totalregistration.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=487%3A2013-ap-exam-score-distributions&catid=18%3Amisc

If you randomly selected students from the population of test taker, the odds of choosing 15 that had a five on the exam would be 1/71,297,275,998. I would consider that strong evidence that the class in question is not a random collection of test takers...

Whether the students are more intelligent, the education was superior, they cheated, or some combination thereof cannot be determined from the test scores. See "confounding"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

Um, Rojo got a 5 in AP calculus but can only estimate the number of students in his very small prep school class within 33%. Good thing that trust fund (paid for by tax dollars) kicked in and he never had to actually work for a living.

TheGarbageDisposal wrote:

fdgdghgfnjs wrote:

So then why post the(incorrect) math?

Introducing conservatism into your estimates while clearly stating your assumptions is done all the time in actuarial work, especially when the unknown piece(s) of the equation is going to be a rough estimate at best (such as the correlation between the scores of the students in question due to their shared background). Well done Jamin.

-TGD, FSA 2011, MAAA 2013

Have to agree with TGD, FSA. Assuming independence in this instances is a perfectly reasonable assumption and in my opinion jamin went above and beyond by pointing out his assumption on an internet messageboard.

SneakinSally, ASA

Clearly you doubters are unfamiliar with the Harker School. It's a super-elite private school, located in the heart of Silicon Valley in California, and attended by a very large number of brilliant students (Asian and Indian in large part)

It's arguably the best math/science school in the entire United States, rivaled only by Thomas Jefferson High School in northern Virginia, and perhaps some elite East Coast boarding schools such as Exeter.

So in response to the OPs original question, the answer is yes, these kids are among the world's smartest! Harker is not exactly a "normal" school.

I took it to mean that 10 kids got a 5, with one kid being 1 of 33 to get all the questions correct.

The Schnide wrote:

http://m.mercurynews.com/sjm/db_317628/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=hxSTmzei

11 students from a class of 15 scored perfect on the AP test. Only 33 perfect scores out of Millions.

Did these kids find a way to Kip Lipton the test? Could be a phenomenon but where there's smoke...

I teach at a school where many kids get 5's on AP's and it is expected. They are not cheating.

It happens.

L'Hôpital wrote:

Taco Truck wrote:

This is AP Economics which is kind of a joke. If it was AP Calc or Physics, that is something else.

AP Calc??? what are you 5 years old?

The AP Calc BC exam was not easy for me, and I went on to major in math with straight As.

I had to take a dump through the whole multiple choice section though. Worst feeling ever.

That's hot.

xenonscreams wrote:

L'Hôpital wrote:

AP Calc??? what are you 5 years old?

The AP Calc BC exam was not easy for me, and I went on to major in math with straight As.

I had to take a dump through the whole multiple choice section though. Worst feeling ever.