AP US History - Score Calculator

Adjust the sliders to guesstimate which rubric points you think you’ll get. The calculator will apply the accurate score weights + give you an estimated final score! (Pep’s final form will change depending on your score 🌶️)

Exam sections and scoring

• Every AP subject has standardized sections on the exam. They usually include multiple choice and free response questions.
• Each section is worth some number of points based on 1) the number of questions and 2) sometimes a scoring rubric. Each section also has a different weight on your final score.

Yes! The weights of the score + the points possible are very accurate, based on info from the Course & Exam Descriptions and Scoring Guidelines from the 2023 AP exams.

(If you notice any errors, please email us at help@fiveable.me so we can fix it!)

The one area that can’t be perfectly accurate is how we determined the final predicted scores (College Board doesn’t publish the “cut points” for each scores.)

We used old released exams and other calculators to estimate “if you earned this % of points, you would earn this score”:

• 0-29% = 1
• 30-44% = 2
• 45-59% = 3
• 60-74% = 4
• 75% or more = 5

These are meant to be benchmarks to give a rough idea of where you might fall, but the actual numbers are adjusted each year to be based on the curve. We’re probably pretty close though.

It’s all relative (really). We tend to think your score matters far less in the long run, so there really isn’t such thing as a “bad score”. Taking the test and going through the process is correlated with going to and doing better in college.

Technically, a “3” is considered passing because it’s the lowest score that can earn college credit. Some colleges require 4s or 5s. And some (elite) colleges don’t give credit at all.

You can search all colleges for their AP Credit policy here: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/getting-credit-placement/search-policies

College Board publishes the distribution of scores for every subject so you can see what % earned each score on the 5-point scale: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/about-ap-scores/score-distributions

We listed these on the calculator as well :)

This calculator is useful because it’s a baseline. Once you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can make a plan to improve!

In the weeks leading up to the exam, you should do a few things:

• Take the time to review all the content. Don’t reread the textbook or anything, but remind yourself of all the key topics.

• Go through the study guides and find areas where you remember less content: https://library.fiveable.me/

• Start practicing questions on topics that you know the least. You can do easy, medium, hard, or extremely hard questions to test yourself: https://library.fiveable.me/practice