Overview of the AP Test

The test is the first week of May. You will get your score in early July. It costs just under $100.
You will earn a score of 1-5. If you earn a 3, you may get 3 hours of credit at most colleges. If you
earn a 4 or a 5, you can get 6 hours of credit at most colleges.

You will have 3 hours to take the AP test.
There are two sections.
Section I: Multiple Choice (60 minutes) (worth 45% of grade)
o There are 55 questions based on six passages (3 prose and 3 poetry).
o An average pace would be to spend 10 minutes on each passage.
o You need to get at least 30-35 of these correct.
o Questions include a lot of academic vocabulary and require very careful reading!

Section II: Essays (2 hours) (worth 55% of grade)
o There are three essay questions.
o Each essay is given a score of 1-9 (by a committee of teachers from all over the U.S.).
o You will need to earn at least an average of a 5 on essays in order to pass the test.

o You will get all 3 questions when you start the section. You have 2 hours to write these 3 essays
in any order. An average time would be 40 minutes each.
o You should write 2-4 pages for each essay.
Question 1 is the poetry essay.
You will be shown a poem that youve probably never seen.
Sometimes students are shown two poems to compare.
There will be a prompt for you to base your essay on.

Question 2 is on a short piece of fiction. (same format as Q1)

Question 3 is the open-ended question (this is where you can really shine!)
You will be given a broad prompt about literature that you can answer using any
classic novel/play you have read in the past (they also give a suggested list).
You cannot write about short stories/poemsshort novels are OK.

Your handwriting must be clear or graders will NOT give you a passing score!

Score categories:
5: extremely well-qualified (college A level)
4: well-qualified (college B level)
3: qualified (college C level)
2: possibly qualified
1: no recommendation