How can College Board guarantee that students’ AP scores are equivalent on different versions of the exam?

The AP Program designs different exam versions to be of similar difficulty and equivalent in the content and skills they cover. However, some exam versions may be slightly more difficult than others. Despite these minor variations in difficulty, student scores will not be affected. After the exam, differences in difficulty are identified through psychometric equating processes that assign higher and lower “cut scores” required for AP scores of 2, 3, 4, and 5 to reflect the relative difficulty of each version of the exam. This ensures that overall AP scores represent the same levels of achievement, regardless of which version of the exam a student takes.