Important Updates
New AP Course Pacing Guide
This pacing guide (.pdf/173.12 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 live online review sessions April 19–30.
Course Overview
AP Human Geography is an introductory college-level human geography course. Students cultivate their understanding of human geography through data and geographic analyses as they explore topics like patterns and spatial organization, human impacts and interactions with their environment, and spatial processes and societal changes.
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AP Human Geography Course at a Glance
Excerpted from the AP Human Geography Course and Exam Description, the Course at a Glance document outlines the topics and skills covered in the AP Human Geography course, along with suggestions for sequencing.
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AP Human Geography 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 Human Geography 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 Human Geography 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
Based on the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, this course framework provides a clear and detailed description of the course requirements necessary for student success. The framework specifies what students must know, understand, and be able to do, with a focus on big ideas that encompass core principles, theories, and processes of the discipline. The framework also encourages instruction that prepares students for advanced geography coursework and active global citizenship.
The AP Human Geography framework is organized into seven 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 (Multiple-Choice Section) |
| Unit 1: Thinking Geographically | 8%-10% |
| Unit 2: Population and Migration Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
| Unit 3: Cultural Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
| Unit 4: Political Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
| Unit 5: Agriculture and Rural Land-Use Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
| Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
| Unit 7: Industrial and Economic Development Patterns and Processes | 12%–17% |
Course Skills
The AP Human Geography framework included in the CED outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like geographers.
Skill |
Description |
Exam Weighting (Multiple-Choice Section) |
Exam Weighting (Free-Response Section) |
| 1. Concepts and Processes | Analyze geographic theories, approaches, concepts, processes, or models in theoretical and applied contexts | 25%–36% | 23%–29% |
| 2. Spatial Relationships | Analyze geographic patterns, relationships, and outcomes in applied contexts | 16%–25% | 33%–43% |
| 3. Data Analysis | Analyze and interpret quantitative geographic data represented in maps, tables, charts, graphs, satellite images, and infographics | 13%–20% | 10%–19% |
| 4. Source Analysis | Analyze and interpret qualitative geographic information represented in maps, images (e.g., satellite, photographs, cartoons), and landscapes | 13%–20% | 10%–19% |
| 5. Scale Analysis | Analyze geographic theories, approaches, concepts, processes, and models across geographic scales to explain spatial relationships | 13%–20% | 10%–14% |
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 Human Geography.