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Important Updates

Preparing Students for the Exam

Starting August 1, students and teachers will have new resources and a daily support tool called AP Classroom to use throughout the year. Designed and tested in collaboration with AP teachers, these resources include unit guides that cover the content and skills assessed on the exam, progress checks and a dashboard to highlight strengths and opportunities for growth, and a question bank of real AP questions.

Learn more about the new resources

Exam Overview

Exam questions assess the course concepts and skills outlined in the course framework. For more information on exam weighting, download the AP Calculus AB and BC Course and Exam Description.

Encourage your students to visit the AP Calculus BC student page  for exam information and exam practice.

 

 

  • Event
    • Tue, May 5, 2020

    AP Calculus BC Exam Day

    • 8 a.m. | 3 hrs 15 mins

Exam Format

The AP Calculus BC Exam will continue to have consistent question types, weighting, and scoring guidelines every year, so you and your students know what to expect on exam day. The overall format of the exam—including the weighting, timing, and number of questions in each exam section—won’t change.

Section 1: Multiple Choice

45 Questions | 1 Hour 45 minutes | 50% of Exam Score

  • Part A: 30 questions; 60 minutes (calculator not permitted).
  • Part B: 15 questions; 45 minutes (graphing calculator required).
  • Questions include algebraic, exponential, logarithmic, trigonometric, and general types of functions.
  • Questions include analytical, graphical, tabular, and verbal types of representations.

Section 2: Free Response

6 Questions | 1 Hour 30 Minutes | 50% of Exam Score

  • Part A: 2 questions; 30 minutes (graphing calculator required).
  • Part B: 4 questions; 60 minutes (calculator not permitted).
  • Questions include various types of functions and function representations and a roughly equal mix of procedural and conceptual tasks.
  • Questions include at least two questions that incorporate a real-world context or scenario into the question.

AP Calculator Policy

A graphing calculator is permitted for parts of the exam (see Exam Format).

Exam Questions and Scoring Information

For free-response questions (FRQs) from the 2019 exam, along with scoring information, check out the table below.

Be sure to review the Chief Reader Report. In this invaluable resource, the chief reader of the AP Exam compiles feedback from members of the AP Reading leadership to describe how students performed on the FRQs, summarize typical student errors, and address specific concepts and content with which students have struggled the most that year.

New Exam Resources

Beginning in August 2019, you’ll have access to the full range of questions from past exams in AP Classroom. You’ll have access to:

  • an online library of AP questions relevant to your course

  • personal progress checks with new formative questions

  • a dashboard to display results from progress checks and provide real-time insights

2019: Free-Response Questions

2019: Free-Response Questions
Questions Scoring Samples and Commentary Score Distributions

Free-Response Questions

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Coming Soon: Scoring Guidelines for CED Sample Free-Response Questions

Scoring guidelines for the sample exam questions within the AP Calculus AB and BC Course and Exam Description will be posted later this summer.

Score Reporting

Policies