Advance Placement (AP)

The Advanced Placement program, offers college level courses at high schools across the United States and Canada. According to the Good Schools Guide International, it is "usually much more rigorous than the general course offerings The most taken AP exam in 2008 was AP United States History with 346,641 students, and the least taken was AP Italian Language and Culture with 1,930 students.
The College Board, a non-profit organization based in New York City, has run the AP program since 1955.[5] From 1965 to 1989, Harlan Hanson was the director of the Advanced Placement Program. It develops and maintains guidelines for the teaching of higher level courses in various subject areas. In addition, it supports teachers of AP courses, and supports universities. These activities are funded through fees charged to students taking AP Exams.
Many high schools in the United States offer AP courses, though the College Board allows any student to take any examination, regardless of participation in its respective course. Therefore, home-schooled students and students from schools that do not offer AP courses have an equal opportunity to take the examination.
AP tests are scored differently from the A-F grading scale common in the United States. They are scored on a numeric scale, 1 to 5. As of 2007, the test that test-takers scored the lowest on by percentage was AP United States Government and Politics and the highest was AP Chinese Language and Culture.
Grading the AP is a long and complicated process. The multiple choice component of the exam is scored by computer, while the free response and essay portions are scored by trained Readers at the AP Reading each June. The scores on various components are weighted and combined into a Composite Score, which is a raw score. The Chief Reader for each exam then decides on the grade cutoffs for that year's administration of the exam. The raw Composite Scores are converted into a grade based on these cutoffs. During the process a number of reviews and statistical analyses are performed to ensure that the grading is reliable. The overall goal is to have an absolute scale of grading that will allow schools and colleges to compare the results from year to year.