Key findings
- The “easiest” AP exam by pass rate is Chinese Language and Culture (89.2% scored 3+ in 2025), but that is a native-speaker effect. Students with no home exposure to Chinese passed at 69.0%, and in Japanese the standard group passed at 52.7%, lower than any exam on the list.
- Among exams without a heritage-speaker skew, the highest 2025 pass rates were Precalculus (80.8%), African American Studies (79.2%), Calculus BC (78.6%) and Chemistry (77.9%).
- The lowest 2025 pass rates were Latin (58.6%), Statistics (60.3%), Music Theory (60.5%) and Computer Science Principles (61.9%). Statistics also had the largest share of 1s (23.7%).
- Calculus BC gave 5s to 44.0% of takers, more than double Calculus AB (20.3%). Only Chinese (54.9%) gave out more.
- The weighted pass rate rose from 59.7% in 2019 to 71.4% in 2025 across all exams, and the share of 5s from 14.4% to 18.0%. Most of the rise came in single-year jumps on individual exams after College Board changed how it sets score cut points.
- Nine exams gained 14 to 25 points in pass rate between 2019 and 2025, led by English Literature (49.7% to 74.2%). Computer Science Principles fell 10 points.
- 2026 preliminary pass rates barely moved overall (our estimate: 72.3% weighted). Latin jumped from 58.6% to 73%.
- Data: 40 exams, 352 rows, 2019–2026, free CSV download under CC BY 4.0.
The easiest AP exams on paper are the world languages, but the pass rates there mostly reflect who takes them. In 2025, AP Chinese Language and Culture had the highest pass rate of any timed exam (89.2% scored 3 or higher) and AP Spanish Language and Culture was second (85.0%). Strip out students who speak the language at home and Chinese falls to 69.0%. Among exams where heritage speakers don’t distort the picture, the highest pass rates belonged to AP Precalculus (80.8%), AP African American Studies (79.2%), AP Calculus BC (78.6%) and AP Chemistry (77.9%). The hardest by pass rate were AP Latin (58.6%), AP Statistics (60.3%), AP Music Theory (60.5%) and AP Computer Science Principles (61.9%).
We built this page from College Board’s own year-end score distribution PDFs for 2019 through 2025, plus the preliminary 2026 percentages College Board posts for each exam. That is 40 exams and 352 rows of data, with every pass rate and test-taker count recomputed from the score counts. Below you will find the full 2025 table (sortable and searchable), ranking charts, the native-speaker effect, the 2019–2026 trend and the scoring-change debate behind it, and a free CSV.
Which AP exams have the highest and lowest pass rates?
Pass rate here means the share of test takers who scored 3, 4 or 5, the range most colleges consider for credit. The charts rank the 35 timed exams from 2025, the latest year with exact counts. We left out the five portfolio and capstone courses (AP Seminar, AP Research, 2-D Art and Design, 3-D Art and Design, Drawing) because students submit most of that work during the year rather than sitting a single exam. Those five are in the full table further down.
Lowest pass rates: bottom 10 timed AP exams, 2025 (% scoring 3 or higher)
Source: College Board, AP Score Distributions by Subject 2025 (PDF). Bars scaled to 100%. AP Physics 1 ties Macroeconomics at 67.3%.
Four of the top ten are world languages: Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. Read those with the caveat in the native-speaker section. The other six are a mix: two math courses, a science, two English exams and the newest course, African American Studies, which launched in 2024.
The bottom of the list is less intuitive. Statistics and Computer Science Principles are often recommended as gentler AP options, yet both sit near the bottom. Statistics had the highest share of 1s of any exam (23.7%), followed by Computer Science A (22.0%), Physics 1 (19.2%), Japanese (17.8%) and Computer Science Principles (16.8%). A popular “easy” reputation pulls in students who are less prepared, and the score distribution shows it.
The spread is narrower than many rankings suggest. Across the 35 timed exams the median pass rate was 71.7%. Only 30.6 points separate Chinese at the top from Latin at the bottom, and 24 of the 35 exams sit between 64% and 75%.
Which AP exams give the most 5s?
A pass rate tells you how many students cleared the bar; the share of 5s tells you how many reached the top. The two rankings differ. AP English Language had a 74.3% pass rate in 2025 but only 13.4% fives, while AP Computer Science A passed just 67.2% yet gave 25.6% a five. If you are chasing a 5 for a selective college’s credit policy, this chart matters more than the pass rate.
Fewest 5s: bottom 10 timed AP exams, 2025 (% of takers scoring 5)
Source: College Board, AP Score Distributions by Subject 2025 (PDF). Bars scaled to 60%.
Calculus BC stands out: 44.0% of its 160,436 takers scored a 5, more than double Calculus AB (20.3% of 285,891). BC covers more material than AB, so the gap is not about easier content. It is about who enrolls: BC students tend to be the strongest math students in their schools, often a year ahead. You can estimate where you would land with the AP Calculus BC score calculator.
The fewest-5s list is dominated by writing-heavy humanities exams: English Language, World History, European History and US History all gave fives to 13.4% to 14.2% of takers. The essays in these exams are graded on rubrics where the top band is hard to reach, even though the pass rates of the history exams are now in the 64% to 74% range. AP Spanish Literature (9.1%) had the fewest fives of any timed exam in 2025.
All 40 AP exams: 2025 score distributions
The table lists every AP exam College Board reported for 2025, with the preliminary 2026 pass rate alongside. Select a column heading to sort; select it again to reverse. Type in the search box to find an exam (abbreviations such as APUSH work), or narrow the list by exam type. Exam names link to our score calculator where one exists.
| AP Chinese Language and Culture | World language | 89.2% | 54.9% | 6.2% | 4.11 | 18,312 | 85% |
| AP Research | Portfolio / capstone | 88.5% | 14.8% | 2.2% | 3.44 | 43,214 | 90% |
| AP Spanish Language and Culture | World language | 85.0% | 21.9% | 2.6% | 3.58 | 182,670 | 83% |
| AP Drawing | Portfolio / capstone | 84.2% | 17.1% | 3.2% | 3.47 | 23,107 | 83% |
| AP Seminar | Portfolio / capstone | 83.4% | 9.4% | 4.2% | 3.17 | 126,001 | 88% |
| AP 2-D Art and Design | Portfolio / capstone | 83.0% | 11.9% | 3.3% | 3.33 | 48,279 | 85% |
| AP Precalculus | Timed exam | 80.8% | 28.1% | 8.0% | 3.55 | 253,596 | 82% |
| AP African American Studies | Timed exam | 79.2% | 17.3% | 4.9% | 3.41 | 21,435 | 77% |
| AP Calculus BC | Timed exam | 78.6% | 44.0% | 6.2% | 3.82 | 160,436 | 82% |
| AP Chemistry | Timed exam | 77.9% | 17.9% | 6.2% | 3.36 | 168,833 | 76% |
| AP Italian Language and Culture | World language | 75.2% | 24.6% | 7.8% | 3.41 | 2,241 | 69% |
| AP Japanese Language and Culture | World language | 74.7% | 43.3% | 17.8% | 3.55 | 3,245 | 72% |
| AP English Language and Composition | Timed exam | 74.3% | 13.4% | 9.7% | 3.19 | 616,294 | 75% |
| AP English Literature and Composition | Timed exam | 74.2% | 16.2% | 10.0% | 3.24 | 416,531 | 73% |
| AP United States History | Timed exam | 73.7% | 14.2% | 8.0% | 3.30 | 516,738 | 74% |
| AP French Language and Culture | World language | 73.5% | 14.0% | 6.3% | 3.20 | 19,639 | 71% |
| AP Physics C: Mechanics | Timed exam | 73.2% | 21.7% | 10.8% | 3.30 | 65,980 | 72% |
| AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism | Timed exam | 72.9% | 25.2% | 9.2% | 3.38 | 29,708 | 75% |
| AP Physics 2 | Timed exam | 72.6% | 21.8% | 7.2% | 3.38 | 24,211 | 72% |
| AP European History | Timed exam | 72.6% | 14.0% | 8.4% | 3.27 | 86,729 | 74% |
| AP Comparative Government and Politics | Timed exam | 71.8% | 16.3% | 11.7% | 3.16 | 27,150 | 70% |
| AP United States Government and Politics | Timed exam | 71.7% | 23.7% | 9.9% | 3.34 | 387,973 | 76% |
| AP 3-D Art and Design | Portfolio / capstone | 71.6% | 6.7% | 3.9% | 3.06 | 10,304 | 75% |
| AP German Language and Culture | World language | 71.5% | 21.3% | 10.8% | 3.28 | 4,213 | 68% |
| AP Psychology | Timed exam | 70.5% | 14.4% | 9.8% | 3.20 | 334,038 | 74% |
| AP Biology | Timed exam | 70.4% | 18.9% | 8.6% | 3.24 | 287,232 | 71% |
| AP Spanish Literature and Culture | World language | 70.3% | 9.1% | 8.8% | 3.03 | 27,266 | 71% |
| AP Environmental Science | Timed exam | 69.2% | 12.6% | 15.8% | 3.06 | 245,371 | 69% |
| AP Microeconomics | Timed exam | 68.2% | 21.6% | 11.5% | 3.24 | 117,548 | 68% |
| AP Macroeconomics | Timed exam | 67.3% | 20.4% | 11.3% | 3.20 | 176,356 | 66% |
| AP Physics 1 | Timed exam | 67.3% | 19.8% | 19.2% | 3.12 | 174,401 | 68% |
| AP Computer Science A | Timed exam | 67.2% | 25.6% | 22.0% | 3.18 | 93,217 | 66% |
| AP Art History | Timed exam | 65.6% | 16.0% | 10.3% | 3.11 | 25,584 | 67% |
| AP Human Geography | Timed exam | 64.7% | 17.0% | 9.9% | 3.14 | 282,781 | 66% |
| AP World History: Modern | Timed exam | 64.3% | 13.9% | 9.2% | 3.16 | 411,547 | 66% |
| AP Calculus AB | Timed exam | 64.2% | 20.3% | 13.0% | 3.21 | 285,891 | 65% |
| AP Computer Science Principles | Timed exam | 61.9% | 10.7% | 16.8% | 2.87 | 175,174 | 63% |
| AP Music Theory | Timed exam | 60.5% | 18.8% | 14.7% | 3.01 | 17,799 | 59% |
| AP Statistics | Timed exam | 60.3% | 17.0% | 23.7% | 2.92 | 266,791 | 62% |
| AP Latin | World language | 58.6% | 12.5% | 16.2% | 2.84 | 4,336 | 73% |
No exams match that search. Try a shorter word, such as "physics".
Download the full dataset as CSV (352 rows, 2019–2026, UTF-8; columns: exam, year, pct5, pct4, pct3, pct2, pct1, pass_rate, takers, mean_score, source_url, notes).
How to read the table. Mean score is the average on the 1 to 5 scale, computed from College Board’s counts (AP Biology 2025: 3.24, matching the published figure). Test takers are exams, not unique students: in 2025, 3,243,979 students took 6,182,171 AP exams. The 2026 column uses College Board’s preliminary whole-number figures, so a one-point difference from 2025 is within rounding noise.
Size matters for stability. The ten largest exams account for 61.6% of all AP exams taken. AP English Language alone had 616,294 takers. At the other end, Italian had 2,241 and Japanese 3,245, so a few hundred students changing course can move those pass rates several points in a year.
The native-speaker effect: Chinese, Japanese and Spanish
The world-language pass rates are inflated by heritage and native speakers, and College Board publishes the data to prove it. For six languages it reports a “standard group”: students who did not indicate that they regularly speak or hear the language at home and who have not lived for a month or more where it is spoken. Comparing that group with all takers shows how much of each exam’s reputation comes from students who grew up with the language.
| Exam (2025) | All takers: pass rate | All takers: % 5s | Standard group: pass rate | Standard group: % 5s | Standard group share of takers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese Language and Culture | 89.2% | 54.9% | 69.0% | 23.0% | 25.7% |
| Japanese Language and Culture | 74.7% | 43.3% | 52.7% | 12.4% | 44.1% |
| German Language and Culture | 71.5% | 21.3% | 62.4% | 8.8% | 65.3% |
| Italian Language and Culture | 75.2% | 24.6% | 70.6% | 15.9% | 71.3% |
| French Language and Culture | 73.5% | 14.0% | 70.1% | 8.8% | 72.9% |
| Spanish Language and Culture | 85.0% | 21.9% | 80.5% | 15.3% | 27.9% |
Table: All takers vs College Board’s standard group, 2025. Source: AP Score Distributions by Subject 2025 (PDF). Share = standard-group takers ÷ all takers, our arithmetic.
Chinese is the clearest case. Only about one in four AP Chinese takers is in the standard group (4,712 of 18,312 in 2025). Those students passed at 69.0% and earned fives at 23.0%, close to the middle of the pack for all exams. The overall 54.9% fives comes mostly from the other three quarters. The gap has been stable for years: between 17.8 and 23.1 points of pass rate in every year from 2019 to 2025.
Japanese is the most dramatic. At 52.7%, the standard group’s pass rate would rank last among all 2025 timed exams, below Latin (58.6%). German’s standard group (62.4%) would rank 32nd of 36. If you are a classroom learner with no home exposure, these are among the hardest AP exams, not the easiest.
Spanish Language is the exception that holds up. Standard-group students still passed at 80.5% in 2025 with 15.3% fives, which would place fourth among timed exams. Spanish is taught widely from middle school, and many standard-group students arrive with years of instruction. Our AP Spanish Language score calculator shows how the four sections combine. French and Italian sit in between: the standard group makes up about 70% of takers, so overall and standard-group results are close.
How AP pass rates changed from 2019 to 2026
Across all exams, the share of AP scores at 3 or higher rose about 12 points in six years. We weighted each exam by its number of test takers, so the figure answers “what share of AP exams taken earned a 3+”:
Source: College Board year-end score distribution PDFs, 2019–2025; our calculation (sum of takers × pass rate ÷ total takers). 2026 is an estimate: preliminary 2026 percentages weighted by 2025 test takers, because 2026 counts are not yet published. COVID years in yellow.
Over the same period the weighted share of 5s went from 14.4% to 18.0%, and the average AP score from 2.91 to 3.24. The typical exam moved too: the median pass rate of the 38 exams offered every year since 2019 went from 65.7% to 71.8%, and the number of those exams with a pass rate of 70% or more went from 15 to 25.
The rise was not gradual. It came in large one-year jumps on specific exams, while other exams barely moved or fell. Between 2019 and 2025, 22 of the 38 exams gained pass rate and 16 lost it.
| Exam | 2019 pass rate | 2025 pass rate | Change | Biggest one-year jump |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English Literature | 49.7% | 74.2% | +24.5 | 2022: 43.9% → 77.9% |
| Chemistry | 55.6% | 77.9% | +22.3 | 2023: 54.0% → 75.1% |
| Physics 1 | 45.4% | 67.3% | +21.9 | 2025: 47.3% → 67.3% |
| English Language | 54.3% | 74.3% | +20.0 | 2025: 54.6% → 74.3% |
| Environmental Science | 49.2% | 69.2% | +20.0 | 2025: 54.1% → 69.2% |
| US History | 53.7% | 73.7% | +20.0 | 2024: 47.5% → 72.2% |
| US Government | 55.1% | 71.7% | +16.6 | 2024: 49.2% → 73.0% |
| Human Geography | 49.1% | 64.7% | +15.6 | 2025: 56.1% → 64.7% |
| European History | 58.1% | 72.6% | +14.5 | 2024: 59.4% → 71.6% |
| Computer Science Principles | 71.9% | 61.9% | −10.0 | (no jump; steady decline) |
| Physics C: Mechanics | 81.8% | 73.2% | −8.6 | (largest drop: 2025, 76.3% → 73.2%) |
Table: AP exams with the largest pass-rate changes, 2019 to 2025. Source: College Board PDFs; changes are our arithmetic.
A single-year jump of 20 to 34 points is not what learning looks like. Student skill doesn’t change that fast across hundreds of thousands of test takers. What changed is how College Board sets the cut points. Read every number in this section as “after the score-setting change”, not as proof that students got better or worse. Note also that the Physics 1, Physics 2, Physics C and Psychology courses and exams were redesigned for 2025, so their 2025 figures are not like-for-like with earlier years either. Our grade inflation research looks at the same question for high school GPAs.
Is it inflation? The score-setting debate, both sides
College Board now sets AP cut scores with what it calls evidence-based standard setting. According to its AP Central page on score setting, the method draws on hundreds of college faculty rather than a small panel, compares AP results with how college students taking the equivalent course perform, and aims for scores that predict success in later college courses. The same page says faculty generally support distributions where 60% to 80% of students earn a 3 or higher, which it equates with a college grade of C or better.
The case that scores are inflated. Paul E. Peterson of Harvard, writing in Education Next, argues that the method lowered the bar on popular exams. His evidence: the jumps line up with the year each exam moved to the new method; the pool of test takers grew rather than becoming more selective; and national tests such as NAEP show no matching gain in learning. He also points out that the 2025 average pass rate sits inside College Board’s 60% to 80% target band, and he warns admissions officers that some AP scores are inflated.
The case that rigor is unchanged. Trevor Packer, who leads the AP program at College Board, answered in a rebuttal also published by Education Next. He says the exams themselves are equated to keep difficulty stable, that the new method converts scores more accurately using college faculty input, and that results moved in both directions: some pass rates fell between 2024 and 2025, including Calculus BC, Statistics and Physics C: Mechanics. He made a similar case in an EdWeek opinion essay in October 2024, describing the change as restoring consistency rather than lowering standards.
What our data can and cannot settle. The data supports both observations at once: the biggest jumps are concentrated in a handful of large exams in specific years, and plenty of exams did not rise (Computer Science Principles, Physics C: Mechanics, Calculus BC and most languages fell between 2019 and 2025). The year-by-exam pattern in the table above is inferred from the data. College Board has not published a list of which exam adopted the method in which year, so we do not state that as fact. For your own planning, the practical point is simple: compare exams within the same year, not a 2025 score with a 2019 one.
What the 2026 preliminary results show
College Board’s preliminary 2026 percentages suggest the post-change level is holding. Weighting the 2026 figures by 2025 test takers gives an estimated 72.3% pass rate, against 71.4% in 2025. That estimate will change once College Board publishes 2026 counts. The 2026 figures are whole numbers, so differences of about one point are rounding noise.
Of the 40 exams, 16 rose by more than a point, 15 fell by more than a point and 9 were within a point. The notable moves:
- Latin: 58.6% → 73%, the largest change by far, with fives up from 12.5% to 20%. Latin had only 4,336 takers in 2025, so small exams can swing like this.
- US Government: 71.7% → 76%, Psychology 70.5% → 74%, Calculus BC 78.6% → 82% (with 46% fives).
- Italian: 75.2% → 69%, Chinese 89.2% → 85%, German 71.5% → 68%. All are small or heritage-heavy exams.
- Spanish Literature fives: 9.1% → 20%, while its pass rate moved less than a point (70.3% → 71%). We checked this against College Board’s exam page, which shows the same figures.
The 2026 rankings look much like 2025. Chinese (85%), Spanish Language (83%), Calculus BC (82%) and Precalculus (82%) lead the timed exams. Music Theory (59%), Statistics (62%) and Computer Science Principles (63%) trail. If you are waiting on your own results, our guide to when AP scores come out covers the release timing.
Why 2020 and 2021 don’t count
The COVID years broke the series, in opposite directions. In 2020, AP exams were 45-minute, at-home, open-note online tests with free-response questions only. Pass rates rose: the weighted figure hit 64.3%, against 59.7% in 2019. In 2021, College Board ran a mix of paper, digital and at-home administrations after a disrupted school year, and the weighted pass rate fell to 55.8%, the lowest in the series.
| Exam | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calculus AB | 58.4% | 61.4% | 51.0% | 55.7% |
| Biology | 64.7% | 69.1% | 59.2% | 67.9% |
| US History | 53.7% | 58.7% | 47.2% | 48.2% |
| Chemistry | 55.6% | 56.1% | 51.3% | 54.0% |
| Physics 1 | 45.4% | 51.6% | 42.1% | 43.3% |
Table: Pass rates for five large AP exams through the COVID years. Source: College Board PDFs.
The pattern is the same in each row: up in 2020, down in 2021, partway back in 2022. If someone cites a “record” or a “collapse” using 2020 or 2021, check the baseline. For trends, compare 2019 with 2022 onward. One more break: the 2019 row for World History is the old course before College Board cut its scope to 1200 CE to the present, so 2019 to 2020 is not like-for-like for that exam.
Easy by pass rate is not the same as easy for you
A pass rate describes the students who chose an exam, not the exam itself. Three forces push the numbers away from “difficulty”:
- Who enrolls. Calculus BC and Physics C are taken mostly by students who already did well in AB calculus or Physics 1. Their high fives say more about the students than the content. Statistics and Computer Science Principles attract a wider range of students, including many taking their first AP, and their score distributions are lower.
- Who speaks the language. As the standard-group data shows, Chinese and Japanese look easy because most top scorers grew up with the language.
- How the course is scored. Seminar (83.4%), Research (88.5%) and the art portfolios are graded largely on work submitted during the year. Their high pass rates reflect months of revision, not a single sitting.
Size of the exam is not one of those forces. Across the 35 timed exams in 2025, the correlation between number of takers and pass rate was close to zero (−0.05).
| If you are… | Then the numbers suggest… |
|---|---|
| A strong math student choosing between Calculus AB and BC | BC’s 44.0% fives reflect a stronger pool; take BC if you are ready for the pace, not because it looks easier |
| A heritage speaker of Chinese, Japanese or Spanish | The overall pass rates (89.2%, 74.7%, 85.0%) are a fair guide for you |
| A classroom learner of Japanese or German | Use the standard-group rates (52.7%, 62.4%), which are among the lowest of any exam |
| Looking for a “first AP” in 9th or 10th grade | Human Geography (64.7%) and World History (64.3%) have below-median pass rates; plan real study time |
| Picking Statistics because it sounds easy | 23.7% of takers scored a 1 in 2025, the highest share of any exam |
Table: Reading the pass rate for your situation. Figures from College Board’s 2025 distributions.
How to use these numbers when choosing AP classes
Use the distributions to set expectations, then plan with your own scores. A practical order:
- Start with interest and your college plans. Check which scores your target colleges accept for credit; many want a 4 or 5, which makes the share of 5s more relevant than the pass rate.
- Compare within one year. Use the 2025 column or the 2026 preliminary column, not a mix of years from before and after the scoring change.
- Adjust for self-selection. Use standard-group rates for languages and discount the fives on BC and Physics C if you are not already a top math or physics student.
- Estimate your own score from practice tests. Our AP score calculator converts multiple-choice and free-response points into a projected 1 to 5 for 23 exams, including APUSH, AP Statistics and AP Chemistry.
- Check the calendar. Two heavy exams on the same day is a real cost; see the AP exam schedule.
- Think about GPA. Many schools weight AP grades; see how a full AP load changes your numbers with the GPA calculator with AP classes.
Methodology
Every 2019–2025 value comes from College Board’s year-end “Student Score Distributions” PDFs, which give the number of students at each score for every exam. From those counts we computed test takers, pass rate (share scoring 3 or higher), the share at each score and the mean score. For every year, the sum of test takers across exams matches the national total printed in the PDF footnote exactly (for example, 6,182,171 exams in 2025 and 5,098,815 in 2019).
2026 values come from College Board’s AP Students score-distribution pages for each exam. They are preliminary whole-number percentages and include no test-taker counts, so 2026 cannot be weighted exactly; our 2026 weighted figure uses 2025 takers as weights and is labeled as an estimate.
We cross-checked the PDFs against College Board’s per-exam web pages and used the PDF wherever they disagreed. The web pages contain errors: Chinese Language 2020 shows 66.4% fives (the row then sums to 111%; the PDF says 55.4%), French Language 2021 shows 25.4% threes (the PDF says 35.4%), and several 2021 test-taker counts on the web pages are lower than the PDF (AP Biology: 212,198 on the page vs 230,527 in the PDF). Each affected row is noted in the CSV.
Standard-group rows for six world languages come from the per-exam pages for 2019–2024 (they match the PDF) and from the 2025 PDF. Weighted averages sum takers × rate over all exams in a year, excluding standard-group rows. Subscores (the Calculus AB subscore for BC takers, Music Theory aural and non-aural subscores) are not exams and were excluded.
Limitations
- Pass rate is an outcome, not a difficulty rating. It mixes content difficulty, scoring standards and who takes the exam.
- The score-setting change breaks comparisons over time for the exams that jumped. College Board has not published an exam-by-year list, so we infer the timing from the data.
- 2026 is preliminary. Rounded figures, no counts, no standard-group data yet.
- Small exams are volatile. Italian (2,241 takers), Japanese (3,245), German (4,213) and Latin (4,336) can move several points a year.
- Coverage. Precalculus and African American Studies have data only from 2024. Exams not on College Board’s 2026 distribution page are not included.
- Names changed. 2-D/3-D Art and Design and Drawing were called Studio Art before 2020; Environmental Science is the name used in the yearly tables.
Download the data and cite this page
The CSV and tables are free to reuse under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), including commercially, as long as you credit The Homework Site and link to this page. The underlying figures are College Board’s; please cite the College Board sources as well.
Sources
- College Board, Student Score Distributions 2019 (PDF): reports.collegeboard.org
- College Board, Student Score Distributions 2020 (PDF): reports.collegeboard.org
- College Board, AP Score Distributions by Subject 2021–2025 (PDFs), for example 2025: apcentral.collegeboard.org
- College Board, AP Students, AP score distributions (2026 preliminary, per exam): apstudents.collegeboard.org
- College Board, AP Central, “Score Setting and Scoring”: apcentral.collegeboard.org
- Paul E. Peterson, “Admissions Officers Beware: Some Advanced Placement Scores Are Inflated,” Education Next: educationnext.org
- Trevor Packer, “AP Exams as Rigorous as Ever,” Education Next: educationnext.org
- Trevor Packer, “Why Are Advanced Placement Scores Suddenly So High?”, EdWeek opinion, October 2024: edweek.org
Checked October 15, 2026. If you spot an error in the table, tell us and we will correct it.