Part II: About the AP World History Exam

• The Structure of the World History Exam

• How the World History Exam Is Scored

• Overview of Content Topics

• What Do They Want From Me?

• How AP Exams Are Used

• Other Resources

• Designing Your Study Plan

THE STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD HISTORY EXAM

The AP World History Exam is divided into two sections: multiple choice and free- response essays. Section I of the test is comprised of 70 multiple-choice questions to be answered in 55 minutes. Section II of the test begins with a ten-minute reading period (time to review the documents you must use for the first essay question), followed by a two-hour period to write three essays.

HOW THE WORLD HISTORY EXAM IS SCORED

Once the multiple-choice section of your test has been scanned and your essays scored by readers, ETS (your local testing giant) applies a mysterious formula that converts your raw score numbers to a 120-point scale. Somehow they turn 70 possible multiple- choice points into 60 points, and 27 possible essay points into another 60 points.

But that’s not all the magic they do. They then take your score (up to 120 points) and convert it to the standard AP 1 to 5 score that you see when you rip open the test results that come in the mail. Seems like a little bit of a letdown to do all this work for a 4, doesn’t it? However, a 4 or a 5 is the score that will most likely get you what you want from the college or university you’ll attend—college credit for World History. A 3 is considered passing and might get you college credit; then again, it might not. Therefore, your goal is to get at least a 3, preferably a 4 or 5. If you receive below a 3, it is highly unlikely that you will get college credit for your high school AP course, but you still get a grade for that class. A good grade in an AP class always looks good on your transcript.

The tricky part about the 1 to 5 scoring system is that it is designed to compare you to everyone else who took the AP World History Exam during a given year. But if the test that year was particularly tough, the top 25 percent or so of scorers will still score 4’s and 5’s. In other words, if all the scaled (0-120) scores are somewhat low, the top end will still earn high marks. Of course, the opposite is also true—if everyone does an excellent job, some people will end up with 2’s and 1’s.

What Do The Scores Mean?

Student score distributions from the May 2013 College Board AP World History Exam.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENT TOPICS

The AP World History Exam divides all history into six major periods from about 10,000 years ago to the present. On the multiple-choice section of the test, the distribution of questions is as follows:

Now, you may be wondering why the first period spans thousands of years while the last period spans a little more than 100 years. When more and more societies came into being and got more complex, world history also got more complex. Also, we have more historical accounts and documents to study from recent history than we do from ancient history, so we simply know more about what happened in the last 100 years. Even though there are 8,000 years in the first period, 800 in the third period, and just over 100 in the last period, you can study each period for the same amount of time. The review of history included in this book divides world history into the periods covered on the exam in order to help guide your study.

By the Way

While the multiple-choice section of the test asks questions from each of the above periods, these questions do not appear in any particular order. In other words, when you take the multiple-choice part of the exam, you’ll jump from the Roman Empire to the present back to the Middle Ages back to the present and so on. Some students find it a challenge to shift gears rapidly from hunter-gatherers to NAFTA to Galileo, so be sure to do a few trial runs on the practice tests in Part V of this book.

Free-Response Questions (a.k.a. the Essays)

In the free-response section of the exam, you are asked to write three essays, each in response to a question. The questions are:

The document-based question or DBQ: As the name implies, the DBQ is based on a collection of four to ten documents that you must use in order to answer the question. Luckily, you will have 10 minutes at the start of the essay portion of the test to read the given documents prior to writing your essay. That may not sound like a lot right now, but don’t worry. Our chapter on the DBQ will tell you exactly what to do with those 10 minutes.

The continuity and change-over-time essay: Again, as the name implies, you need to answer a question about how something changed over a certain period of time and how it remained the same. These questions tend to deal with large global issues such as technology, trade, culture, migrations, or biological developments. Our chapter on change over time and comparative essays will help you get organized for this essay.

The comparative essay: The comparative essay typically asks you to compare how two societies responded to a major theme or event. Our chapter on change over time and comparative essays will help you get organized for this essay.

WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME?

What is the AP World History Exam really testing? In a nutshell: Can you make connections between different societies over different periods of time? In other words, for any given period of history, can you explain who was doing what? How did what they were doing affect the rest of the world? What changed about the society during this period of time? To show what you know about world history, keep this big-picture perspective in mind as you study and answer multiple-choice questions or construct essays. To help you do this, keep an eye out for certain recurring themes throughout the different time periods. Specifically, be on the lookout for the following:

• How did people interact with their environment? Why did they live where they did? How did they get there? What tools, technology, and resources were available to them? How was the landscape changed by humans?

• What new ideas, thoughts, and styles came into existence? How did these cultural developments influence people and technology (for example: new religious beliefs or Renaissance thought)?

• How did different societies get along—or not get along—within a time period? Who took over whom? How did leaders justify their power? Who revolted or was likely to revolt? And were they successful?

• How did economic systems develop and what did they depend on in terms of agriculture, trade, labor, industrialization, and the demands of consumers?

• Who had power and who did not within a given culture and why? What was the status of women? What racial and ethnic constructions were present?

For each time period covered in Part IV of this book, you will find boxes that identify these major themes, plus a Big Picture overview and a Pulling It All Together summary for each period. The introduction to Part IV will fill you in on how to use these tools as you study.

HOW AP EXAMS ARE USED

Different colleges use AP Exams in different ways, so it is important that you go to a particular college’s website to determine how it uses AP Exams. The three items below represent the main ways in which AP Exam scores can be used:

• College Credit. Some colleges will give you college credit if you score well on an AP Exam. These credits count towards your graduation requirements, meaning that you can take fewer courses while in college. Given the cost of college, this could be quite a benefit, indeed.

• Satisfy Requirements. Some colleges will allow you to “place out” of certain requirements if you do well on an AP Exam, even if they do not give you actual college credits. For example, you might not need to take an introductory-level course, or perhaps you might not need to take a class in a certain discipline at all.

• Admissions Plus. Even if your AP Exam will not result in college credit or even allow you to place out of certain courses, most colleges will respect your decision to push yourself by taking an AP Course or even an AP Exam outside of a course. A high score on an AP Exam shows mastery of more difficult content than is taught in many high school courses, and colleges may take that into account during the admissions process.

OTHER RESOURCES

There are many resources available to help you improve your score on the AP World History Exam, not the least of which are your teachers. If you are taking an AP class, you may be able to get extra attention from your teacher, such as obtaining feedback on your essays. If you are not in an AP course, reach out to a teacher who teaches American History, and ask if the teacher will review your essays or otherwise help you with content.

Another wonderful resource is AP Central, the official site of the AP Exams. The scope of the information at this site is quite broad and includes:

• Course Description, which includes details on what content is covered and sample questions

• Full-length practice test

• Essay prompts from previous years

• AP World History Exam Tips

Finally, The Princeton Review offers tutoring for the World History Exam. Our expert instructors can help you refine your strategic approach and add to your content knowledge. For more information, call 1-800-2REVIEW.

DESIGNING YOUR STUDY PLAN

As part of the Introduction, you identified some areas of potential improvement. Let’s now delve further into your performance on Test 1, with the goal of developing a study plan appropriate to your needs and time commitment.

Read the answers and explanations associated with the multiple-choice questions (starting at this page). After you have done so, respond to the following questions:

• Review the Overview of Content Topics on this page and, next to each one, indicate your rank of the topic as follows: “1” means “I need a lot of work on this,” “2” means “I need to beef up my knowledge,” and “3” means “I know this topic well.”

• How many days/weeks/months away is your AP World History Exam?

• What time of day is your best, most focused study time?

• How much time per day/week/month will you devote to preparing for your AP World History Exam?

• When will you do this preparation? (Be as specific as possible: Mondays & Wednesdays from 3 to 4 pm, for example)

• Based on the answers above, will you focus on strategy (Part Three) or content (Part Four) or both?

• What are your overall goals in using this book?