The AP World History: Modern Exam is 3 hours and 15 minutes long and broken up into two sections, each of which consists of two parts. Your performance on these four parts, outlined in the table below, is compiled and weighted to find your overall exam score.
Here’s what to expect in each of these sections.
Multiple Choice: Questions will be grouped into sets of two to five and based on primary or secondary sources, including excerpts from historical documents or writings, images, graphs, maps, and so on. Each set of questions will be based on a different piece of source material. You’ll have 55 minutes to answer 55 multiple-choice questions. This section will test your ability to analyze and engage with the source materials while recalling what you already know about world history.
Short Answer: You will answer three of the four questions in this section. Questions 1 and 2 are required, and then for the third and final question, you will choose between Questions 3 and 4. These questions will require you to respond to a primary or secondary source, a historian’s argument, or a general proposition about world history. Your response should be about a paragraph in length. The time allotted for this section is 40 minutes.
Document-Based Question (DBQ): Here you’ll be presented with a variety of historical documents that are intended to show the complexity of a particular historical issue. You will need to develop a thesis that responds to the question prompt, and support that thesis with evidence from both the documents and your knowledge of world history. To earn the best score, you should incorporate outside knowledge and be able to relate the issues discussed in the documents to a larger theme, issue, or time period. The 60-minute timeframe for this section includes a suggested 15-minute reading period so that you can familiarize yourself with the question and documents.
Long Essay: You’ll be given a choice of three essay options, and you must choose one to answer. The long essay is similar to the DBQ in that you must develop a thesis and use historical evidence to support an argument, but there will be not be any documents on which you must base your response. Instead, you will need to draw upon your own knowledge of topics you learned in your AP World History class. You’ll have 40 minutes to write this essay.
Each of the four parts of the exam is weighted differently to determine your overall score.
|
Test Section |
Percentage of Overall Score |
|
Multiple Choice |
40% |
|
Short Answer |
20% |
|
DBQ |
25% |
|
Long Essay |
15% |
Rubrics are provided for both the DBQ and long essay in later chapters.
Once the multiple-choice section of your test has been scanned and your essays have been scored by readers, ETS (your local testing giant) applies a mysterious formula and magically converts your results to the standard AP Exam 1 to 5 score you see when you rip open the test results that come in the mail. A score of 4 or 5 will most likely get you what you want from the college or university you’ll attend—college credit for World History. A score of 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: Modern Exam during a given year. But if the test that year was particularly tough, the top 20 percent or so of scorers will still score 4s and 5s. In other words, if all the scaled 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 still end up with 1s and 2s.
The AP World History: Modern Exam divides all history into four major periods from about 800 years ago to the present.
|
Period |
Date Range |
|
Period 1: Regional and Interregional Interactions |
c. 1200C.E. to c. 1450 |
|
Period 2: Global Interactions |
c. 1450 to c. 1750 |
|
Period 3: Industrialization and Global Integration |
c. 1750 to c. 1900 |
|
Period 4: Accelerating Global Change and Realignments |
c. 1900 to the present |
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.
There are three types of essays on the AP World History: Modern Exam. The first are the short-answer questions. You need to answer three of these, which require you to respond to a primary source, a historian’s argument, sources such as data or maps, or general propositions about world history.
The second type of essay is the Document-Based Question (DBQ), a question based on approximately seven primary-source documents. You must formulate a thesis or claim in response to a prompt, and then support your thesis using evidence from the documents, as well as outside examples. You should incorporate as many documents as possible into your response.
The third type is the long essay, which is probably more like the type of question you might see on a classroom test. For this essay, you are given three options, and you must answer one. This essay requires you draw upon your knowledge of world history and what you learned in your AP World History course to respond to a historical issue.
What is the AP World History: Modern 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? 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 V 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 V will fill you in on how to use these tools as you study.
Furthermore, the College Board states that the AP World History: Modern Exam is designed to test specific skills, including
analyzing historical evidence in both primary and secondary sources
developing an argument, using specific historical evidence
understanding and using the context of a historical event or development to explain its significance
comparing historical developments and being able to identify their similarities and differences
describing causes and effects of historical developments, as well as patterns of continuity and/or change over time
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.
There are many resources available to help you improve your score on the AP World History: Modern 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 World History, and ask whether the teacher will review your essays or otherwise help you with content.
Another wonderful resource is AP Students, the official site of the AP Exams. The scope of the information at this site is quite broad and includes
a course description, which includes details on what content is covered and sample questions
full-length practice tests from previous years
essay prompts from previous years
AP World History: Modern Exam tips
The AP Students home page address is: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org.
The AP World History: Modern home page for students is: http://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-world-history-modern/assessment.
Finally, The Princeton Review offers tutoring for the AP World History: Modern Exam. Our expert instructors can help you refine your strategic approach and add to your content knowledge. For more information, call 1-800-2REVIEW or visit www.PrincetonReview.com.
In Part I, you identified some areas of potential improvement. Let’s now delve further into your performance on Practice 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 on 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: Modern 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: Modern Exam?
When will you do this preparation? (Be as specific as possible: Mondays & Wednesdays from 3:00 to 4:00 P.M., for example)
Based on the answers above, will you focus on strategy (Part IV), content (Part V), or both?
What are your overall goals in using this book?