Important Updates
New AP Course Pacing Guide
This pacing guide (.pdf/163.11 KB), designed for classrooms that have only completed approximately 25% of typical course content by January, can help students develop their knowledge and skills by May. If your students are ahead of this pace, you’ll be able to incorporate additional days or weeks to spend more time on challenging topics, practice course skills, or begin reviewing for the exam.
AP Daily and AP Classroom
Short, searchable AP Daily videos can be assigned alongside topic questions to help you cover all course content, skills, and task models, and check student understanding. Unlock personal progress checks so students can demonstrate their knowledge and skills unit by unit and use the progress dashboard to highlight progress and additional areas for support. As the exam approaches, assign AP practice exams in the AP Classroom question bank and encourage students to take advantage of AP Daily: Live Review sessions April 19–29.
Course Overview
AP European History is an introductory college-level European history course. Students cultivate their understanding of European history through analyzing historical sources and learning to make connections and craft historical arguments as they explore concepts like interaction of Europe and the world; economic and commercial developments; cultural and intellectual developments; states and other institutions of power; social organization and development; national and European identity; and technological and scientific innovation.
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AP European History Course Overview
This resource provides a succinct description of the course and exam.
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AP European History Course at a Glance
Excerpted from the AP European History Course and Exam Description, the Course at a Glance document outlines the topics and skills covered in the AP European History course, along with suggestions for sequencing.
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AP European History Course and Exam Description
This is the core document for this course. Unit guides clearly lay out the course content and skills and recommend sequencing and pacing for them throughout the year. The CED was updated in the summer of 2020 to include scoring guidelines for the example questions.
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AP European History CED Errata sheet
This document details the updates made to the course and exam description (CED) in September 2019. It includes printable copies of the updated pages, which can be used as replacement sheets in your CED binder. Note: It does not include the scoring guidelines, which were added to the online CED in the summer of 2020.
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AP European History CED Scoring Guidelines
This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the course and exam description (CED) would be scored. This information is now in the online CED, but was not included in the binders teachers received in 2019.
Course Content
Influenced by the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, this course framework provides a description of the course requirements necessary for student success.
The AP European History framework is organized into nine commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.
| Unit | Exam Weighting |
| Unit 1: Renaissance and Exploration | 10%–15% |
| Unit 2: Age of Reformation | 10%–15% |
| Unit 3: Absolutism and Constitutionalism | 10%–15% |
| Unit 4: Scientific, Philosophical, and Political Developments | 10%–15% |
| Unit 5: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th Century | 10%–15% |
| Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects | 10%–15% |
| Unit 7: 19th-Century Perspectives and Political Developments | 10%–15% |
| Unit 8: 20th-Century Global Conflicts | 10%–15% |
| Unit 9: Cold War and Contemporary Europe | 10%–15% |
Historical Thinking Skills
The AP European History framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like historians.
| Skill | Description |
| 1. Developments and Processes | Identify and explain historical developments and processes. |
| 2. Sourcing and Situation | Analyze sourcing and situation of primary and secondary sources. |
| 3. Claims and Evidence in Sources | Analyze arguments in primary and secondary sources. |
| 4. Contextualization | Analyze the context of historical events, developments, or processes. |
| 5. Making Connections | Using historical reasoning processes (comparison, causation, continuity and change) analyze patterns and connections between and among historical developments and processes. |
| 6. Argumentation | Develop an argument. |
AP and Higher Education
Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.
This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search.
Meet the Development Committee for AP European History.