Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology (also known as AP Psych) and its corresponding exam are part of
College Board's Advanced Placement Program
Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...
. This course is tailored for students interested in the field of
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
and as an opportunity to earn Advanced Placement credit or exemption from a
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...
-level psychology course. It was the shortest AP exam until the
AP Physics C
In the United States, Advanced Placement (AP) Physics collectively refers to the College Board Advanced Placement Program courses and exams covering various areas of physics. These are intended to be equivalent to university courses that use best ...
exam was split into two separate exams in 2006.
AP Psychology is often considered one of the easier AP exams; relative to the other tests, the material is rather straightforward and much easier to self-study. Among all the social studies Advanced Placement exams, the Psych exam had the second-highest passing rate in 2018.
Topics covered
The College Board provides a course of study to help educators prepare their students for the AP Psychology exam. The exam covers the following 9 areas. The percentage indicates the portion of the multiple-choice section of the exam focused on each content area:
Exam
The exam includes two sections: a 70-minute
multiple choice
Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only correct answers from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format is mo ...
section (100 questions) and a 50-minute
free response Free response questions or essay questions are a type of open-ended question commonly used in schools to Test (student assessment), test students' learning, as well as in entrance exams and sometimes as part of job application or screening processes ...
section (2 prompts). The multiple choice provides two-thirds of the grade and the free-response provides the remaining third.
Beginning with the May 2011 AP Exam administration, total scores on the multiple-choice section are based only on the number of questions answered correctly. Points are no longer deducted for incorrect answers. Grading (the number of points needed to get a certain score) is slightly more strict as a result.
Grade distribution
The exam was first held in 1992. Grade distributions for the Psychology exam scores since 2010 were:
References
Notes
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External links
AP Psychology at CollegeBoard.com
Advanced Placement
Science education