Important Updates
AP Human Geography Updates and New Resources for 2019-20
To help more students prepare for — and succeed on — the AP Human Geography Exam, we’ve clarified the course’s focus starting with the 2019-20 school year and are introducing new resources for your classroom. We’ve also moved exam registration to the fall, a best practice that improves students’ chances of earning college credit and placement.
Download the new course and exam description (CED)
New AP Resources
AP Classroom is now available. Designed with AP educators, it helps you provide students daily practice and personalized feedback throughout the year. Sign in to access AP unit guides with aligned resources, topic questions, personal progress checks, the progress dashboard, and your question bank.
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—Fall 2019
This is the core document for this course and is new for the 2019-20 school year. New unit guides clearly lay out the course content and skills and recommend sequencing and pacing for them throughout the year. The CED also more clearly outlines how material will be assessed on the exam, provides instructional strategies, and gives information on the AP Program in general.
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AP Human Geography CED Scoring Guidelines
This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the 2019-20 CED would be scored.
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 new 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.