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Show THE PARK RECORD www.parkrecord.com WEDTHURSFRI, MAY 5-7, 2004 A-9 EDUCATION EDITOR: Jared Whitley 649-9014 ext.118 mca' educationparkrecord.com 2 Advanced Placement test season begins Briefe E Congratulations Pari? City High School student Abby Jant Sutherland is winner of the T. H. Bell Teaching Incentive Loan Program, fellow PCHS student Brandy Oavis is an alternate. PCHS students Chad Ay and Caaey Krug have won the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship with Ryan Hart as an alternate. Utah State Biotech Academy The Utah State University . Center for Integrated BioSystems is offering Utah and Idaho teens the opportunity to explore how scientists create life-saving life-saving medicines, to debate the safety of genetically modified foods and to learn about the latest research progress in the areas of microbe, plant and animal genetics. Scheduled for July 12-16 on the Utah State campus, the academy is open to high school students entering the 11th and 12th grades in the 2004-2005 2004-2005 school year. Participants pay a $100 registration fee. The deadline for applications is May 10. For application information contact Christen Sundberg at 435-797-2753 or visit www.biosys-tems.usu.edu. www.biosys-tems.usu.edu. Scholarships available Soaring Wings Montessori School has limited scholarships available for children chil-dren 2 to 4 years old for the 2004-05 school year, Applications are available at 1255 Park Avenue, room 307, between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Completed applications applica-tions are due by May 14. MR SAVE I SALE CON nur.'DANCE CATALOG p ' ' . fit , , - ' 'v V ( t Students can earn college credit in high school By JARED WHITLEY Of the Record staff Although Monday was a holiday Park City students, almost 80 students were there at 7:45 a.m. to take a grueling, three-hour test. Waiting for it to begin, some chatted, some crammed, some worried wor-ried visibly, ; some played hackey sack outside the school library. Before the English test began, junior Lizzie Leader quizzed her friends from some flashcards, trying to cram a few last literary terms and Latin phrases before the big exam. "I'm actually pretty confident," she said. "We've prepared a lot in class." This marked the beginning of the Advanced Placement (AP) test season, the culmination of a rigorous year of preparation. AP tests are designed to fulfill college requirements. For example, if students successfully complete the English language lan-guage test, they dont need to take freshman fresh-man writing in college. Students can earn as many as 12 hours worth of college credit for passing their tests, which are graded on a scale from 1 to 5. A 3 is generally gen-erally good enough, but some schools accept credit only if the student earns a 4 or 5. Taking an AP test "says that students are willing to extend themselves, challenge chal-lenge themselves to be lifelong learners in high school," said Jerry Fiat, Park City High School counselor. "I think it prepares pre-pares them for the next stage of life as far as academic rigor." - Some schools, mostly private, don't accept AP credit at all, Fiat said, and completing an AP program is simply part of the application process. "That's what the applicant pool is doing: challenging themselves to the highest degree possible," Fiat said. Already accepted to the University of' California at Santa Barbara, senior Ben Botkin doesn't know how well his AP tests will transfer over to college credit. This year, he's taking two AP tests - U.S. history and U.S. government - in addition addi-tion to five he took in previous years. He says he didn't take AP classes to take a short cut through higher education, though. "I want to go for the four years," he JUST IN TDRflil FOR MOTHER'S DAY! .AKT!M0'OHF;:OW JltfJELKY . If . !fM rJ J-LL Jerry Fiat administers the English lang said. "I pursued AP classes because I like the fact that they're challenging and they're going to be more like college classes than regular classes. I also find that AP classes have a lot less busy-work." busy-work." Like some students, Botkin is not taking tak-ing the test that correlates to his AP classes. Enrolled in AP Spanish literature litera-ture and statistics, Botkin "lacked the desire" to go all the way with those two. Junior Stephanie Thurin is taking four AP tests: English language, physics, calculus, cal-culus, and European history. Beyond the heavy AP load, Thurin has four finals at this time too. "I've been locked away in my room studying," Thurin said. To help remember remem-ber everything, Thurin has developed "little, one sentence" phrases. For .physics, she recites the phrase, "When in dance &Y&f0G OUTLET STORE liSiiiiMiiii UTU HIGHLAND DR., SLC varies ts& is Haitad. yy-rSyv -' ,,",,;V' , x : : a r i nrtn fe Wmad -wsgf jjFsaJg uage AP test to students in Park City doubt, work equals zero!" because half the time, the answer is zero in physics word problems. When she's finished, she plans to "sleep for a very long time." At PCHS, 396 of its approximate 1,200 students signed up for 632 exams. The most popular test is human geography. geogra-phy. At South Summit High School, 26 of its 388 students will take AP tests, and the most popular is United States history, said counselor Nick Gibson. North Summit High School has 10 of its 300 students stu-dents taking AP classes, but offers only two subjects: statistics and calculus. Park City teacher John Sanders has prepared three classes this year for the English language test, covering non-fiction material like essays. It consists of a one-hour multiple choice section where students must analyze reading "passages 8SBfMS8s 1- I 801.407.34C3 I "' ,; l--' 1 . v v ?a y 3 T 1- If . I I r i mm s uvt "J t V iV - JIA s , SCOTT SHEIPARK RECORD High School's media center Monday. deliberately chosen for their difficulty," he said. Then, following a break, students must write three essays in two-hours. Sanders joked that he himself would have difficulty with that. "Write three good essays in two hours? That's tough!" he said. Following the tests, students still have a month before school ends. , And Sanders isn't going to give them a break. Many of his students will take AP English literature next year, so they'll study a novel before the year's out. "It's not over," he said. "We've got a whole month to do something academically academi-cally worthwhile." AP tests are administered at the same time of the school year as are the state-. state-. mandated core curriculum tests. ".'";.' Please see AP tests, A-1 2 :i A.V.J' 1 a '1 |