AP ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

'Advanced Placement Environmental Science' ('AP Environmental Science' or 'APES') is a course offered by the College Board as part of the Advanced Placement Program to high school students interested in the environmental and natural sciences. This course is designed to provide students with scientific principles, concepts, and methodologies necessary to comprehend the relationships abundant within the natural world, to identify and analyze environmental problems, to evaluate relative risks associated with these identified problems, and to examine alternative solutions for resolving and/or preventing similar problems facing the global environment.

Contents

Themes of the Course

The Exam

Grade Distribution

Notes

External links

Themes of the Course

★ Science is a process.

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★ Science is a method of learning more about the world.

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★ Science constantly changes the way we understand the world.

★ Energy conversions underlie all ecological processes.

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★ Energy cannot be created; it must come from somewhere.

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★ As energy flows through systems, at each step more of it becomes unusable.

★ The Earth itself is one interconnected system.

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★ Natural systems change over time and space.

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★ Biogeochemical systems vary in ability to recover from disturbances.

★ Humans alter natural systems.

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★ Humans have had an impact on the environment for millions of years.

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★ Technology and population growth have enabled humans to increase both the rate and scale of their impact on the environment.

★ Environmental problems have a cultural and social context.

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★ Understanding the role of cultural, social and economic factors is vital to the development of solutions.

★ Human survival depends on developing practices that will achieve sustainable systems.

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★ A suitable combination of conservation and development is required.

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★ Management of common resources is essential.

The Exam

★ 'Section I': Multiple Choice (100 questions, 90 minutes)

★ 'Section II': Free-Response (one data-set question, one document-based question, and two synthesis and evaluation questions, 90 minutes)

Grade Distribution

In 2006, 44,698 students took the environmental science exam at 2,225 schools worldwide. The mean score was a 2.59.
The grade distribution for 2006 was:^[1]

Score	Percent
5	9.3%
4	21.9%
3	19.2%
2	17.5%
1	32.0%

The AP Environmental Science Exam is the lowest scoring exam out of all the Advanced Placement Exams.

Notes

1. Grade Distribution Report from collegeboard.com

External links

★ AP Environmental Science at CollegeBoard.com