AP exams have been a topic of interest for many high achieving students in high school ever since their introduction in 1952. With the premise of being able to replace college level classes, AP exams provide students with opportunities to take harder courses in college or even graduate early.

This year, College Board, the parent organization of AP, introduced AP Precalculus. This exam was released to allow students to earn some sort of college credit for math before the famously difficult AP Calculus exam. With AP Precalculus, high schoolers could potentially skip any college course that AP Precalculus would cover, given that they perform well on the end of year AP exam.

Senior Srujan Nuthela, a senior currently Honors Precalculus student, wishes that he could have taken AP Precalculus due to its advantages. “I wish PV offered AP Precalc instead of honors precalc so I could take the AP exam at the end of the year. I would be able to get college credit if I do well enough and ultimately further my math journey,” Nuthela said. 

However, the addition of AP Calculus wasn’t the only change that the College Board decided to implement this year. AP U.S. History (APUSH), regarded as one of the hardest history exams offered by the College Board, has received a significant change in their essay prompts: DBQs and LEQs. 

Typically requiring three documents as evidence in these essays, the College Board has decreased the number of documents to two. Additionally, the complexity point that is often given to the best essays is now much easier to attain.

APUSH instructor Erin Klage believes that this change will benefit students that plan on taking the end of year assessment. “I think the changes to the rubric will overall positively impact students and make their writing more focused. The old rubric had a lot of expectations for students and while this new rubric still challenges students, I feel like it will improve student scores,” Klage explained. 

Although this may seem like a minor change, these prompts can often determine the overall score of the Free Response Questions (FRQ) section of an APUSH exam. Due to the fact that student writing makes up 40 percent of the exam, these prompts can often determine whether a student receives a five or a four on the exam.

Arush Kachuru, a previous APUSH student, reflects on these changes and compares them to his experience with the APUSH exam last May. “I do feel a little jealous of this year’s students since DBQs and LEQs were something that always scared me going into exams. Now, I feel like many won’t face this fear since it is a lot easier to get better scores,” Kachuru stated. 

With the upcoming 2024 AP season, students begin to prepare for the newly introduced AP Precalculus and revamped AP US History. In the future, high school students can expect to see more information coming about about these changes in addition to updated study tools.