AP History Exam Updates

AP history exams will be updated to provide a more consistent exam experience and give students more flexibility to demonstrate what they’ve learned throughout the course. 

What's Changing?

All short-answer questions will include source material, and the long-essay question will be updated to reposition choice within the question. Both changes are designed to improve focus, transparency, and expectations for students.

Short Answer Questions (SAQs)

• Students will be presented with 3 short-answer questions and will be required to answer all 3 questions.
• Short-answer question 1 will include 1 or more secondary text sources, short-answer question 2 will include a primary text source, and short-answer question 3 will include a primary or secondary non-text source.
• Each of the questions will focus on a different historical period.

Long Essay Question (LEQ)

• Students will be presented with 1 long-essay question and will be required to answer it.
• The long-essay question will include a broad prompt from which students will develop a historically defensible thesis or claim, describe the historical context relevant to the prompt, support their argument with at least 2 pieces of specific and relevant evidence, and demonstrate a complex understanding of the focus of the prompt.
• The long-essay question will also include a brief introductory statement to help orient students to the task and suggest possible areas for analysis.

Document-Based Question (DBQ)

• The document-based question will cover a wider chronological range of time, so students can use evidence from across the course.

What’s Staying the Same?

• Course content and skills remain unchanged.
• The multiple-choice section remains unchanged.
• Scoring rubrics for free-response questions remain unchanged, including the criteria for how students earn points.