Advanced Placement Exams (2024)

FAQs

What is the advanced placement exam? ›

What is Advanced Placement and why is it important? AP ^® tests are college-level exams on specific subjects and are administered in May upon the completion of an AP course taken at a student's high school.

Usually, a 70 to 75 percent out of 100 translates to a 5. However, there are some exams that are exceptions to this rule of thumb. The AP Grades that are reported to students, high schools, colleges, and universities in July are on AP's five-point scale: 5: Extremely well qualified.

Students looking to earn admission to highly selective colleges should take multiple AP classes to bolster their applications and demonstrate they can handle challenging coursework. Some college admissions experts recommend taking as many as 7-12 AP courses before applying to the most elite universities.

But what is a passing AP score? The College Board considers a score of 3 or higher a passing grade. That said, some colleges require a 4 or 5 to award credit. Whether a 3 is a good AP score depends on the colleges you're applying to.

A 4 or a 5 is the AP score that will most likely earn you college AP credit. Of course, no matter how you do on the AP test, you still get a grade for that AP class from your high school. Good grades in AP courses always look good on your transcript!

To answer your question directly, no, you can't score a literal zero on an AP test; the scores range from 1 to 5. Even if you were to leave the entire test blank, you'd still get a 1.

Advanced Placement (AP) exams are scored on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest possible score. The College Board, which administers the AP exams, has never awarded a 6 on any AP exam.

Score Cancellation.

This can theoretically be done at any time, but if the request has not been received by June 15 of the year you took the exam, the colleges you indicated on the free score report will still receive it.

Yes, a 60 is considered a passing grade in AP classes. In AP, the average passing rate is 60-70%.

What is the rarest AP class? ›

Many of the least popular AP exams are world language tests, as these exams generally target a more niche group of students. What's more, some languages are less commonly taught at high schools than others (e.g., Japanese and Italian courses are rarer than Spanish courses).

AP in-class sessions are rigorous, whereas college homework and other assignments demand more time. In both cases, time for self-study and time you spend on your classes vary. The workload is also more in both cases, from time to time.

Difficulty. While HL (“High Level”) IB courses are generally considered to be more difficult than equivalent or similar AP classes, SL (“Standard Level”) IB courses are typically seen as similar or easier than their AP counterparts.

Every AP class has a corresponding, subject-specific AP exam. Many colleges grant credit to students who perform well on their AP exams. Colleges may even offer these students advanced placement, meaning they can be placed into higher-level classes during their first year of college.

Some high schools let any student enroll in an AP course as long as the student has taken the recommended prerequisite courses. Other high schools have additional rules—for example, you might have to pass a placement test to enroll in an AP course. Ask your counselor what the process is at your school.

Is a placement test hard? Placement tests aren't necessarily hard. These exams primarily cover the Algebra that you learned in high school, so whether or not they are hard depends on how well you did in Algebra.