Advanced Placement United States History Fact Sheet
The Purpose
The purpose of the AP U.S. History course, as stated by AP Central, is to provide students with the
analytic skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in U.S.
history. The program prepares students for intermediate and advanced college courses by making
demands upon them equivalent to those made by full-year introductory college courses. Students
should learn to assess historical materials—their relevance to a given interpretive problem, reliability,
and importance—and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship. An
AP U.S. History course should thus develop the skills necessary to arrive at conclusions on the basis of an
informed judgment and to present reasons and evidence clearly and persuasively in essay format.
The AP U.S. History examination tests students on a variety of topics ranging from before 1490 to the
present. In order to prepare for the exam students will cover 42 chapters from our text, the American
Pageant – AP edition. This textbook was written by David M. Kennedy, who was chair of the AP
examination development committee from 1990-1995, and has been specifically designed to prepare
high school students to take the AP exam.
The Course
APUSH is a 1 semester course.
1st semester is 83 days long, that is equivalent to 16.6 weeks
2nd semester is 92 days long, that is equivalent to 18.4 weeks
Students will read 42 chapters of material to prepare for the AP exam. They will also be required to read
a primary source book written by Frederick Douglass, which is an additional 100 pages.
Chapters 1-42 = 882 pages
Frederick Douglass = 100 pages
Total = 982 pages
To cover the material needed to be prepared for the AP exam students will need to read:
1st semester (16.6 weeks or 83 days) / 982 pages = 11.8 pages per night
2nd semester (18.4 weeks or 92 days) / 982 pages = 10.6 pages per night
During each class period, students will be exposed to various teaching methods. Power Point lectures
will make up the majority of direct instruction, however, students will also be given the chance to work
in groups to present topics to their peers, participate in academic conversations utilizing the Socratic
Method, and have an opportunity for independent study/reading time.
APUSH students will be faced with a substantial amount of reading and note taking to prepare for their
AP exam. They will also be given homework opportunities which focus on different aspects of the AP
exam:
1. Projects = Students in APUSH are assigned one project per unit. Each project is designed to
strengthen student higher order thinking skills in order to prepare them for free response
writing.
2. Primary Source = Students will spend time in class analyzing primary resources. This is an
important step in preparing students to write a Document Based Question (DBQ) on the AP
exam.
3. President of the United States (POTUS) = Students will be required to research the top three
most significant aspects of each President’s administration. This will help students organize a
Advanced Placement United States History Fact Sheet
timeline and provide a quick review guide which references each administration covered on the
AP exam.
The Exam
The APUSH exam is provided in May of each year; it is a challenging exam and is scored based on a
student’s multiple choice test and three essays. AP Central states that the multiple-choice and the freeresponse sections cover the period from the first European explorations of the Americas to the present,
although a majority of questions are on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Question breakdown for AP exam:
 Pre-Columbian to 1789 ------ 20%
 1790 to 1914 -------------------45%
 1915 to present ---------------35%
1. Multiple Choice = the AP exam multiple choice portion is 50% of the overall exam grade for the
AP examination.
a. The multiple choice tests that APUSH students take in class are provided by the American
Pageant curriculum and have been designed to mimic the multiple choice questions in the
AP exam
b. According to AP Central, the average score for the multiple choice portion of the AP exam
was 57% during the 2013 year. Note: since the multiple choice tests that students take in
APUSH mimic the AP exam, it is reasonable that the percentages of student test scores may
also mimic the percentages reported for the AP exam.
2. Free Response = the AP exam free response portion is 50% of the overall exam grade for the AP
exam. The free response portion is made up of one document based question (DBQ) and two
free response question (FRQ).
a. Students will have multiple opportunities to write free response essays throughout the
semester. These are persuasive essays based on historical data in order to answer specific
historical questions. Students will be given “beginner” free response questions and work
their way up to taking archived AP exam free response questions.
b. According to AP Central, the average score for the free response portion of the AP exam was
36% during the 2013 year.
The tests that students will be taking in class will come from the American Pageant curriculum. They are
challenging tests that will prepare students for the rigor of the AP exam. To provide additional learning
opportunities, students will be given the chance to make test corrections for all incorrect answers they
received on the test. They will then earn a 1/3 point for each correction they turn in.