How Hard Is The Ap Psychology Exam?
Is AP® Psychology easy? What can make it hard? – The AP® Psychology course is definitely more difficult than the typical high school psychology course. AP® courses are meant to teach students at an introductory college level. Compared to other AP® exams, AP® Psychology is considered one of the easier exams to pass in the AP® catalog for the reasons described below.
In 2022, the AP® Psychology exam had a passing rate of 58.3%, with a mean score of 2.86, Historically, the AP® Psychology exam has had a relatively high passing rate compared to all other AP® exams. All of these statistics are based on the total number of students who sit for the AP® Psychology exam every year.
This exam averages about 300,000 students yearly (in 2022, the exam had 292,501 test-takers ), making it one of the most popular exams in the AP® test catalog. If you want to maximize your study time, you’ll want to focus on the areas most represented in the exam.
It will be helpful to know how the individual units are weighted on the exam so you can target your study time accordingly. For the multiple-choice portion of the exam, each of the nine units of the course is represented, but with varying weights. Unit 1: Scientific Foundations of Psychology is weighted at 10-14% of the exam.
Unit 5: Cognitive Psychology, makes up 13-17% of the exam. Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality, accounts for 11-15% for the exam, and Unit 8: Clinical Psychology, makes up 12-16% of the exam. These four units account for roughly half of the exam content. 
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Contents
What is the pass rate of AP Psychology?
The Pass Rate – The pass rate offers valuable information on the difficulty of AP Psychology. So is AP Psychology hard? Over 70% of students who take this exam passed the test, and more than 1 in 5 test-takers earned a perfect score. As the following data shows, the AP Psychology exam reports a nearly identical pass rate to other AP classes.
| AP Class/Exam | Pass Rate (3 or Higher) | Perfect Score (5) |
|---|---|---|
| AP Psychology | 71.3% | 22.4% |
| All AP Classes | 71.13% | 19.57% |
Source: College Board Prospective students can look at the pass rate and the number of perfect scores to determine whether AP Psychology is hard. All AP classes challenge students, but exam data shows that the AP Psychology test ranks similarly to other AP classes in terms of difficulty.
How hard is AP Psychology class?
How Difficult Is AP Psychology – As Rated By Class Alumnae – AP Psych is considered very easy, with class alumnae rating it 3.5/10 for overall difficulty, making it the 2nd-easiest out of the 28 large AP classes surveyed.
What percent is a 5 on the AP Psychology exam?
See how all AP students performed on the most recent exams. The score distribution tables on this page show the percentages of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s for each AP subject. Download a PDF version of the 2022 score distributions.
| Exam | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AP Research | 12.6% | 25.8% | 44.3% | 13.3% | 4.0% |
| AP Seminar | 11.6% | 19.2% | 51.8% | 11.8% | 5.6% |
table> 2022 Score Distributions: Arts
table> 2022 Score Distributions: English
table> 2022 Score Distributions: History & Social Science
table> 2022 Score Distributions: Math & Computer Science
table> 2022 Score Distributions: Sciences
table> 2022 Score Distributions: World Languages & Cultures
Is AP Psych easy to self study?
Pros and Cons of Self-Studying AP Psych Concepts are mostly easy to understand. Interaction with a teacher 👨🏫 👩🏫 is not necessary. Can easily be applied to everyday life. Simple exam format.
Is the AP psych exam curved?
Why are AP® Psychology scores curved? – Curving scores provide a uniform assessment of AP® Psychology students. As we mentioned, the exams change slightly every year and have different average scores. The curve ensures that students taking a harder version of the exam are not underestimated compared to students taking the exam at other times.
How can I study for AP Psych fast?
AP® Psychology Study Guide Step 3: Test Yourself! – 
As you’ve hopefully already learned through your AP® Psych course, the key to solidifying any behavior is practice and repetition. This isn’t just a fact you need to remember for the exam – it’s also something you can apply in your studying! The best way to prepare for the AP® Psychology exam is to test yourself using practice exams from previous years and review questions from other sources.
- When you’re first starting out with your reviewing and studying, don’t worry too much about setting a time limit on your practice exams.
- You may even find it helpful to have your notes or a review book right next to you so you can immediately look something up that you don’t remember.
- This will help you out in the beginning stages of your study plan.
Eventually though, as you get closer to the exam date and in order to get the most out of these practice sessions, it’s important that you set it up just like you would if it were the real thing. Sit at a desk in a quiet room with no distractions. Yes, that means turn your phone off and put it aside as well.
- Set an alarm to give yourself only the amount of time you would have for each section if it were the real thing: 70 minutes for the multiple choice and 50 minutes for the free response.
- Take your practice tests seriously; they will show you what areas you need to work on the most in your study plan.
- After you’ve completed your practice test, go over your answers carefully.
Don’t just count up your score and call it a day, because the real learning comes from going back and finding the correct answers to the questions you got wrong. Make sure that you understand why it is that the answer you chose was incorrect. Was your knowledge of the material lacking or did you fall into a trap set by confusing wording? Being able to recognize what kind of tricks previous exams have used will help you prepare for them in your own exam.
Is a 70% a 5 on the AP exam?
AP exam format – The exams themselves do not grade the students’ mastery of the course material in a traditional sense. Rather, the students’ results guide the grading rubrics and the scale for the “AP Grades” of each exam. The AP exams are graded each summer at a week-long “grading camp.” Both high school AP teachers and university professors are invited to grade the exams at a predetermined location.
- When the AP Reading is over for a particular exam, the free response scores are combined with the results of computer-scored multiple-choice questions based upon a previously announced weighting.
- The Chief Reader (a college or university faculty member selected by the and ) then meets with members of ETS and sets the cutoff scores for each AP Grade.
The Chief Reader’s decision is based upon what percentage of students earned each AP Grade over the previous three years, how students did on multiple-choice questions that are used on the test from year to year, how he or she viewed the overall quality of the answers to the free response questions, how university students who took the exam as PART A experimental studies did, and how students performed on different parts of the exam.
No one outside of ETS is allowed to find out a student’s raw score on an AP Exam and the cutoff scores for a particular exam are only released to the public if that particular exam is released in total (this happens on a staggered schedule and occurs approximately once every five to seven years for each exam).
Usually, a 70 to 75 percent out of 100 translates to a 5. However, there are some exams that are exceptions to this rule of thumb. The AP Grades that are reported to students, high schools, colleges, and universities in July are on AP’s five-point scale:
- 5 : Extremely well qualified
- 4 : Very well qualified
- 3 : Qualified
- 2 : Possibly qualified
- 1 : No recommendation
What is the highest failed AP exam?
1. Physics 1: – AP Physics 1 is the hardest AP class with the least passing rate of 51.6. It means almost half of the students fail this exam. It’s 3 hours exam consist of 50 MCQs and 5 free-response questions. Physics 1 is an algebra-based physics class based on foundational principles of physics.
It covers energy and power, Newtonian mechanics, introductory, simple circuits, mechanical waves, etc. As it is algebra-based, the exam will check your ability to solve the problem by using algebra. The passing rate for this class is the least. The reason behind this is the tricky application of algebra in it.
We recommend that you complete the course like algebra 2 for preparation before.
What is the least hardest AP class?
Infographic: easy and hard AP classes by difficulty and pass rate – Here’s an overview of what the reviews said about which AP tests are easier or harder, combined with intake and pass rate data. Here are the main things to look out for in this infographic:
- The hardest and most time-consuming AP exams are in the top-right corner. Physics C – E&M earns the top difficulty rating based on real student reviews.
- The easiest and least time-consuming are in the bottom-left corner. Computer Science Principles earns the easiest difficulty rating based on real student reviews.
- The colour indicates the pass rate for that AP exam. Red is a low pass rate, green is a high pass rate, brown is about average (College Board, 2022).
Hardest and easiest AP classes: based on data from 2,936 course reviews from Reddit’s r/APStudents We’ve included some additional details too:
The size of the bubbles shows how many students take exams in that AP class (College Board, 2022). The most-widely-taken AP in 2022 was English Language (523k candidates), followed by US History (“APUSH” – 460k candidates)
You might also notice some bubbles have a red outline : this indicates an unusually high percentage – 15% or more – of class alumnae said they wouldn’t recommend the class to other students. This applied to Seminar, Physics 1 and 2, and English Literature, Remember, these classes were nonetheless recommended by the majority of students who took them – so don’t get discouraged too quickly !
Some AP classes were too small for us to have sufficient difficulty rating data to include in our analysis. These were either foreign languages (Spanish Literature, French, Italian Language & Culture, Latin, German, Japanese), or courses in the Art & Design programme (2D and 3D Art & Design, Drawing).
Is it OK to get a 1 on the AP exam?
Key Takeaway: AP students who earn a score of 1 or 2, or average a score of 1 or 2 across their AP Exams in high school, have better college outcomes than academically similar college students who did not take an AP course and exam.
What is the most passed AP exam?
What AP Passing Rates Tell Us – You might think that the best way to tell which AP classes are the hardest is to look at the national data about how many students pass each test each year. We’ll start our discussion here, but beware that the passing rates don’t automatically tell you which classes are hardest,
| Exam Name | Passing Rate (3+) |
| Art and Design: Drawing | 88% |
| Chinese Language and Culture (Total Group) | 87% |
| Art and Design: 2-D Design | 87% |
| Seminar | 83% |
| Research | 83% |
| Spanish Language and Culture (Total Group) | 82% |
| Spanish Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 78% |
| English Literature and Composition | 78% |
| Calculus BC | 77% |
| Japanese Language and Culture (Total Group) | 75% |
| Art and Design: 3-D Design | 74% |
| Physics C: Mechanics | 73% |
| French Language and Culture (Total Group) | 72% |
| Italian Language and Culture (Total Group) | 71% |
| Gov. and Politics – Comparative | 71% |
| Physics 2 | 70% |
| Physics C: Electricity & Magnetism | 69% |
| French Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 69% |
| Computer Science A | 68% |
| Biology | 68% |
| Italian Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 66% |
| German Language and Culture (Total Group) | 66% |
| Chinese Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 65% |
| Computer Science Principles | 64% |
| Spanish Literature | 64% |
| Music Theory | 62% |
| Art History | 62% |
| World History | 62% |
| Statistics | 61% |
| Microeconomics | 59% |
| European History | 59% |
| German Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 58% |
| Psychology | 58% |
| Latin | 57% |
| English Language and Composition | 56% |
| Calculus AB | 56% |
| Japanese Language and Culture (Standard Group) | 54% |
| Chemistry | 54% |
| Environmental Science | 54% |
| Human Geography | 53% |
| Macroeconomics | 52% |
| Gov. and Politics – United States | 49% |
| United States History | 48% |
| Physics 1 | 43% |
Source: College Board, For language rates, “Total Group” includes all students, while “Standard Group” includes only those students who didn’t indicate they speak this language at home or spent more than four weeks studying it abroad. You might be tempted to look at this table and say the tests with the lowest passing rates are hardest, and the ones with the highest passing rates are easiest.
- After all, if not many students can pass an AP test, doesn’t that mean it’s one of the hardest tests? But when you look at the data, the exams with some of the highest passing rates (Spanish, Chinese, Physics C: Mechanics) are often considered among the hardest.
- We’re not including AP Seminar and the AP Studio Art scores in this assessment, since those grades are all portfolio-based, rather than exam-based.
Meanwhile, some of the tests with the lowest passing rates (Human Geography, US Government and Politics, Environmental Science) are often seen as the easiest, So what’s going on here? The truth is, the national passing rates often say more about the students taking the exams rather than the exams themselves.
- Some of the exams with low passing rates have those low rates because they are often taken in freshman/sophomore year, while some of the exams with high rates have more stringent prerequisites at many high schools.
- This means that the harder exams tend to have older, better-prepared students taking them, which raises their pass rates.
In short, we have to look beyond national passing rates when figuring out which tests are the hardest.
What is the best AP class to take?
When Should I Take AP Classes? – Students often use their first year of high school to build a foundation and adjust to the more advanced curriculum. Many first-year students avoid jumping into AP classes as they get used to high school. In fact, some schools don’t even offer AP classes to ninth graders.
Instead, students typically start by taking 1-3 AP classes during their sophomore year, beginning with some of the less demanding courses. They may then pick up the pace during their junior year, enrolling in more challenging options. These courses can enhance your transcript and boost your GPA. You’ll apply for colleges during your senior year, so your junior year is the time to make an especially good impression.
That said, don’t slack off your senior year. Although these AP courses may not play as big a role in college admission decisions, AP test scores can still affect how much college credit you get. Try to balance your AP classes with honors classes, extracurriculars, SAT/ACT prep, volunteer work, and any personal commitments without overloading yourself.
| Grade | Recommended Number of AP Classes to Take | Recommended AP Classes |
|---|---|---|
| 9th Grade | — | |
| 10th Grade | 1-3 | European History, World History, Human Geography, Psychology |
| 11th Grade | 3-5 | English, Calculus AB, Biology, Spanish (or other foreign language), U.S. Government and Politics |
| 12th Grade | 3-6 | Chemistry, Physics C, Calculus BC |
What is a passing grade for psychology?
80: Good.70: Average.60: Passing threshold.0-59: Failed.
How many people get a perfect score on AP Psych?
2022 Perfect AP Scores as Compared to 5s
| AP Exam | # Perfect Scores | % 5s |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 2 | 17.0% |
| AP Research | 306 | 12.6% |
| AP Seminar | 33 | 11.6% |
| Spanish Language | 51 | 23.6% |
