Score Setting and Scoring
An AP score is a weighted combination of a student’s results across multiple components of the exam, including multiple-choice questions (in most subjects), free-response or essay questions, and, in some subjects, projects, portfolios, performance tasks, or through-course assessments. The final AP score is reported on a five-point scale.
The AP Program uses Evidence Based Standard Setting (EBSS) to determine the performance levels students must meet to qualify for AP scores of 2, 3, 4, and 5. EBSS collects input from hundreds of college and university faculty and assembles fine-grained student performance data for analysis, enabling psychometricians to verify and set AP score standards that are informed by a robust dataset.
Setting AP Exam Scores
Researchers use the following steps to define the knowledge and skills required to earn scores of 2, 3, 4, and 5 on an AP Exam.
- Gather data. First, college and university faculty provide data on the difficulty of the AP Exam questions in comparison to their own exam questions, and the alignment of the course and exam with the topics and skills most important to college and career success in each subject area.
- Conduct college comparability studies. In subject areas with high consistency in content across college classrooms, college and university faculty teaching the comparable AP college course administer the AP Exam to students in their course. Student AP scores are correlated to their final exam and course grades.
- Conduct standard-setting studies. During a standard-setting study, a body of data and evidence is assembled, including:
- data and evidence of AP student performance and qualifications
- higher ed faculty expectations for comparable course performance
- college student grades and academic similarities and differences between the population of students taking the subject in college and the AP population
Psychometricians utilize this assembled information to identify appropriate standards for setting AP scores that will be valid in predicting success when students are placed ahead into subsequent courses in the same discipline at a range of colleges and universities. These processes ensure that AP Exam scores achieve the “predictive validity” that has been a hallmark of the AP Program for decades. As a result of these processes, annual studies of AP student performance in college consistently find that AP students with scores of 3 or higher consistently outperform in subsequent college coursework the comparison groups of college students who took the colleges’ own AP-equivalent course.
While colleges and universities are responsible for setting their own credit and placement policies, AP scores provide evidence and recommendations for how qualified students may receive college credit or placement.
| AP Exam Score | Recommendation | College Course Grade Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Extremely well qualified | A+ or A |
| 4 | Very well qualified | A-, B+, or B |
| 3 | Qualified | B-, C+, or C |
| 2 | Possibly qualified | |
| 1 | No recommendation |
How AP Exams Are Scored
The multiple-choice sections of AP Exams are scored by computer. The free-response sections and projects, performance tasks, or through-course assessments, as applicable, are scored by AP teachers and college faculty who have experience teaching corresponding college courses. Exams are scored at the annual AP Reading, with college faculty and high school educators participating both on-site and online.
The chief reader for each exam guides the development of the scoring guidelines used to score free-response questions, oversees day-to-day scoring activities, and selects readers and Reading leadership. Chief readers are always full-time college or university faculty members.
Readers undergo rigorous training and regular, repeated calibration sessions to ensure that they have a thorough understanding of the scoring guidelines. Their work is monitored throughout the Reading for accuracy, consistency, and fairness.
FAQ
Why have some AP subjects' score distributions changed recently?
AP standards are anchored in evidence. The AP Program periodically conducts research on each AP subject around the performance of AP students who use their AP credit to place out of introductory college courses. In this way, on a rotating basis, each AP subject's standards are verified every 5–10 years. This research results in one of three outcomes: the data support a larger proportion of AP students receiving credit-qualifying scores; the data confirm and maintain the same standards as in the past; or the data require reducing the percentage of students receiving particular scores within the 1–5 range.
What has changed about the way AP Exam performance levels are set?
Over the past decade, two key developments have enabled AP to use the robust EBSS process:
- Digital data collection technologies have emerged that have made this type of quick, efficient, large-scale data collection and analysis possible. EBSS uses this new technology to collect, organize, and analyze inputs from hundreds of teachers and faculty, rather than just the experience and perspectives of 10–18 panelists.
- Beginning in fall 2019, the AP Program provided all AP teachers with a new digital library of AP course materials—titled AP Classroom—and an accompanying course and exam description binder. This material, for the first time in the AP Program’s history, established coherent units, topics, learning objectives, and skills for each AP course that explicitly defined the parameters for assessment. This, along with more granular capture of student performance at the level of each free-response question part, enabled a more comprehensive collection of metadata to be applied to each exam question by linking each question part to the skills, content, and difficulty level it was designed to measure. As a result, more granular and targeted student performance data is available for analysts to utilize in determining student abilities at basic, moderate, and exceptional levels.
Do colleges and universities support AP’s standards?
Yes. College faculty from across a wide spectrum of U.S. colleges and universities participate in the EBSS process and typically rate the AP Exam as significantly more difficult than their own institutions’ final exams for the comparable introductory courses. AP students are typically the most academically able students, the top 10%–15% of high school students in that particular subject, and their PSAT assessments scores and SAT scores are typically much higher than those of the college population at large, indicating very strong academic readiness and abilities in comparison to the general college population. Moreover, AP students typically receive 2–3 times more instructional hours in their AP course than students who wait to take the comparable introductory course in college. Accordingly, higher ed faculty generally support AP grade distributions in which 60%–80% of AP students receive AP scores equivalent to a college C or better (i.e., an AP score of 3 or higher).