About the Exam

About the Exam

The three-hour-and-five-minute exam includes a 55-minute multiple-choice section and a 130-minute free-response section.

Section I: Multiple-Choice

The 70 multiple-choice questions cover world history from the Foundations period up to the present. Several questions are cross-chronological but, for the most part, the subject breakdown is:

• Foundations period: c. 8000 B.C.E. to 600 C.E. -- 19–20 percent

• 600 C.E. to 1450 -- 22 percent

• 1450 to 1750 -- 19–20 percent

• 1750 to 1914 -- 19–20 percent

• 1914 to the present -- 19–20 percent

Unlike other multiple-choice tests, random guessing can hurt your final score. While you don't lose anything for leaving a question blank, one quarter of a point is subtracted for each incorrect answer on the test. But if you have some knowledge of the question and can eliminate one or more answers, it's usually to your advantage to choose what you believe is the best answer from the remaining choices.

Section II: Free-Response

There are three free-response questions. You'll write a document-based essay (DBQ), a change-over-time essay, and a comparative essay. Each essay is counted equally toward your final grade.

Please pay close attention to the directive words in the essay questions. Ignoring directives will result in a lower exam score. The following directives may be included:

• Analyze: determine their component parts; examine their nature and relationship

• Assess/evaluate: judge the value or character of something; appraise; evaluate the positive and negative points; give an opinion regarding the value of; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of

• Compare: examine for the purpose of noting similarities and differences

• Contrast: examine in order to show dissimilarities or points of difference

• Describe: give an account of; tell about; give a word picture of

• Discuss: talk over; write about; consider or examine by argument or from various points of view; debate; present the different sides of

• Explain: make clear or plain; make clear the causes or reasons for; make known in detail; tell the meaning of

Document-Based Essay Question

Put on your "historian" hat to demonstrate your ability to analyze source materials and develop an essay based on those materials. Your goal: a unified essay that integrates your analysis of four to ten given documents with your treatment of the topic. Comparative topics on the major themes will provide one of the focuses of the DBQs, including comparative questions about different societies in situations of mutual contact. The DBQ begins with a mandatory 10-minute reading period. Then you'll have 40 minutes to write the essay.

The source materials are chosen for two reasons: the information they convey about the topic and the perspective they offer on other documents used in the section. There is no one perfect DBQ answer; a variety of approaches and responses are possible depending on your ability to understand the documents and, ultimately, judge their significance. Remember: You'll most fully understand some of the documents when you view them within the wider context of the entire series.

When writing the document-based essay, it's important to:

• Refer to individual documents within the framework of the overall topic.

• Use all or all but one of the documents.

• Discuss the materials in reference to the question -- don't just summarize them.

• Cite documents by naming the author and/or by naming the document number.

Also, remember:

• There are no irrelevant or deliberately misleading documents.

• It's important that you put your analytic skills to work and demonstrate that you understand context, bias, and frame of reference regarding the documents' sources and the authors' points of view. Group or juxtapose documents in a variety of ways (e.g. according to their ideas or points of view); suggest reasons for similarities or differences in perspective among the documents; and identify possible biases or inconsistencies within documents.

• You'll be asked to explain the need for additional documents that would help you answer the question more completely. You may also have to discuss which points of view are missing from the given documents. Since the DBQ focuses on historical skills within a world history framework, remember to place documents chronologically, culturally, and thematically.

• You're not expected to know the author or topic of all the DBQ documents, or to include information outside of the documents.

Change-Over-Time Essay

The change-over-time essay focuses on large global issues such as technology, trade, culture, migrations, or biological developments. It covers at least one of the periods in the course outline and one or more cultural areas. You'll have 40 minutes to write the essay. It's recommended that you spend five minutes planning and/or outlining your answer before you begin writing. You may be able to choose different cases to illustrate your point.

Comparative Essay

In the final free-response essay you'll answer a comparative question that focuses on developments in two or more societies, and their interactions with each other or with major themes or events (e.g. culture, trade, religion, technology, migrations). You'll have 40 minutes to write the essay. It's recommended that you spend five minutes planning and/or outlining your answer before you begin writing.

Multiple Choice Section

On the multiple choice section of the AP exam, students receive 1 point for each question answered incorrectly, 0 points for each question left blank, and -1/4 points for each wrong answer. So if a hypothetical student (Sam) answered all 70 questions, but got 20 wrong, her score would be 45 (50 right minus 5 points for 20 wrong answers). This simply compensates for random guessing. Let’s say our student was certain of the answer for 45 of the questions, but had no clue on the last 25 and guessed completely randomly. That student has a 1 in 5 chance of choosing the correct answer, so the odds are Sam would guess

correctly on 5 of the 25, and incorrectly on the other 20. So after the “guessing penalty,” our student would get the same score for the 45 questions she actually knew whether she filled in the “guesses” or left them blank.

So the “guessing penalty” is not a “penalty” at all. It simply is an attempt to statistically adjust the exam scores to prevent students from benefiting from completely random guessing.

All you need to know is:

1. If you are short on time, don’t WASTE it bubbling in questions on the answer sheet that you haven’t even read. Instead, use that time to read more questions and give an intelligent answer.

2. If you HAVE read a question, don’t worry about the “guessing penalty.” Even if you feel you have no clue, answer the question. At worst, statistically it shouldn’t hurt you to answer it. Once you’ve read a question, your guess is no longer completely random. You never know, there might be some shred of knowledge in your subconscious that will guide you to the right answer.

3. You ABSOLUTELY should guess if you can eliminate at least one choice. Take our hypothetical Sam. Say she knew the answer to 45 questions for certain, and could eliminate only ONE choice from each of the last 25. Now the odds are that she will get 6 of those last 25 right and 19 wrong. After the -5 guessing penalty, this will yield a score of 46, one point higher than if she had not had the courage to risk the “guessing penalty” and had left those 25 questions blank. Not a big difference, but you get the point. If Sam had been able to eliminate 2 choices on each, statistically she should get a 49, and if she could eliminate 3 choices,

she’d probably get a 54. So students should definitely learn to eliminate answer choices, but regardless,

the odds are in the favor of guessing as opposed to leaving an answer blank.