Exam Policies and Guidelines – AP Students (2024)

FAQs

What are the rules for AP exams? ›

Whether or not you can make up your AP exam is primarily up to your AP exam coordinator, who requests the make-up exams through the College Board. This person might allow you to make up your test even if you do something like sleep through your alarm or forget about your test and go to your regular class.

If College Board finds that you have deliberately gained or attempted to gain or share an unfair advantage on any College Board test, or otherwise threatened the integrity of the test, we will prohibit you from taking other College Board assessments, including the SAT and AP Exams.

You may not eat or drink in this room. Raise your hand if you must go to the restroom during the exam or need to leave the room for any emergency. You may not leave the room at the end of testing until you have been dismissed.

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.

The College Board considers a score of 3 or higher a passing grade. That said, some colleges require a 4 or 5 to award credit. Whether a 3 is a good AP score depends on the colleges you're applying to.

There will be no make-up sessions and Collegeboard will be notified of behavior that led up to dismissal. Your AP instructor will be notified if you decide to not take the test seriously and sleep during the exam period.

There is no penalty for guessing on any of the AP exams, so it's important to make sure that you try to answer every question. If you're not sure how to answer a multiple-choice question, eliminate any answers that you know are incorrect and choose the best answer from your remaining choices.

Per College Board regulations, students may not be excused early, even if they believe they are finished--even if all students in the same room believe they are finished. All students must stay until the time College Board has allocated for the Exam is expired.

Discussing Exam Questions

The AP Exam is intended to be a fair assessment of your academic ability. Sharing exam information in any unauthorized way compromises the integrity of the exam for all AP students, and for the colleges and universities that grant credit or advanced placement for qualifying AP scores.

What happens if your phone goes off during an AP Exam? ›

If a student has a cell phone we are required to invalidate their exam and ask the student to leave the room. If a cell phone is in a backpack and it goes off that could put the whole testing room at risk of having their scores invalidated. Students are not allowed to access their electronic devices during breaks.

Colleges will not look at your score

You will not be required to send your AP score to your colleges unless you want to earn college credit. In that case, you can wait to pay for an official score report to be sent after you've decided where you are enrolling and after you have completed any senior year AP courses.

❖ You may not have anything other than your pencils and pens on your desk. NO food or beverages are allowed at your desk.

Food or Drink - Not even water bottles. All food/drink will be required to be left outside of the testing room. Unapproved Aids: Books, compasses, protractors, mechanical pencils, correction fluid, dictionaries, highlighters*, notes or colored pencils*.

You are not permitted to bring food or drink, including bottled water, into the exam room (unless approved as an accommodation by College Board's Services for Students with Disabilities office).

AP® Score of 2

If you were to get a 2, then the College Board has determined that you are “possibly qualified” to pass a college level class of the same subject level. This score is usually not accepted by colleges unless there are extenuating circ*mstances.

Many students who first score a 1 or 2 on an AP Exam will take further AP courses and score higher. Depending on when students take their first AP Exam, 61%–84% of students who earn a 2 on their first AP Exam will take another AP Exam in subsequent years.

AP Exams are scored on a scale of 1 to 5. Many U.S. colleges grant credit and/or advanced placement (that means they let you skip the equivalent course once you get to college) for scores of 3 and above.

For an AP exam, getting a score of 5 usually means you've scored around 70% to 80% on the test, but it can vary. The College Board adjusts scores each year based on how everyone does, so there's no fixed percentage.