Seventeen students from the Classes of 2015 and 2016 have earned AP Scholar Awards in recognition of their exceptional achievement on Advanced Placement Program exams.
“Overall, these are the best AP scores students have earned in many years,” says Stuart Swan, Head of University Counselling.
As a university prep school, St. Andrew’s provides willing and academically prepared students with the opportunity to take rigorous university-level courses while still in high school. The AP program is one benchmark by which universities globally can measure the potential of incoming students. In return for successful performance on AP exams, students also earn university credit and help to ease their transition into post-secondary study.
This spring at SAC, 101 AP exams were written by 59 students in 17 subjects.
“At SAC, 72% of our students’ exams were scored at a 4 or higher on a 5-point scale. This is a significant improvement over previous years,” notes Mr. Swan. In addition, four students qualified for the National AP Scholar (Canada) Award by earning 4 or higher on five or more of these exams. This included university bound 2015 graduates Kunal Khemani (Brown University) and Alex Lee (NYU Stern School of Business), and 2016 classmates Alex Xu and Gary Zhou.
Research shows that AP students who score a 3 or higher on AP Exams typically experience greater academic success in university and have higher university graduation rates than students who do not participate in AP. At SAC, 93% of exams written this year were scored at a 3 or higher.
Martin Yu '15 and Ji-Sang Jeon ’16 qualified for the AP Scholar with Distinction Award by earning an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams. Fpur others qualified for the AP Scholar with Honour Award by scoring 3.25 or higher on all AP exams taken and 3 or higher on five or more exams. This included 2015 graduates Andrew Ladouceur and Michael Huang, both of whom will be attending the University of Toronto in September, plus Tiger Wang and Tiger Xu from the Class of 2016.
Seven SAC students qualified as AP Scholars by averaging a score of 3 or higher in three AP exams. These students include graduates Brandon Coverdale (University of Waterloo), Evan Forth (Queen’s University) and Francis Chen, Saad Siddiqui, and Field Tian, all of whom are heading to University of Toronto this fall. The other two were 2016 classmates Andrew Crawford and Jadyn Dragasevich.
Since AP results are cumulative over the grade 11 and 12 years, we can expect to see many SAC students receive AP Scholar status again next year, Mr. Swan says. “These exams are a real measure of a student’s ability and motivation to excel in university-level courses and to writing 3-hour university length exams.”
Story by Cindy Veitch
