Question 1
A firm earns an accounting profit of 40,000 dollars a year. This exactly equals its implicit costs. What is the firm most likely to do in the long run?
Is AP Microeconomics hard?
About two thirds of students who sit it get a 3 or higher: 68.2% in May 2025, and 21.6% earned a 5. The difficulty is less the definitions than reading the cost and revenue curves correctly and drawing graphs with every label in place.
| Students in May 2025 | 117,548 |
|---|---|
| Scored 3 or higher | 68.2% |
| Scored 5 | 21.6% |
| Mean score | 3.24 |
What makes it hard
- Cost curves: MC, ATC and AVC, where they cross, and what price below minimum AVC or minimum ATC means for a firm.
- Side-by-side graphs: a perfectly competitive firm beside its market, and how both change when firms enter or exit.
- Areas on graphs: profit, consumer and producer surplus, tax revenue and deadweight loss, each with the right corners.
- Free response is a third of the score, and a graph point needs every label the question asks for.
What makes it easier
- One rule carries most of the course: produce where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, and hire where marginal revenue product equals marginal resource cost.
- Calculations are short: marginal values from tables, elasticity, profit and areas of rectangles and triangles, with a four-function calculator.
- The course is six units with published weights, so you can plan your time.
Try 2 questions
Question 2
The government places a per-unit tax on each unit a profit-maximizing monopoly sells. What happens to its output and price?
Next step
Questions people ask
What percentage of students pass AP Microeconomics?
In May 2025, 68.2% of the 117,548 students who took AP Microeconomics scored 3 or higher. Many US colleges grant credit or placement for 3 and above, but each college sets its own policy.
What share of AP Microeconomics students earn a 5?
21.6% in May 2025 (25,334 students).
What is the hardest part of AP Microeconomics?
For most students it is the cost curves and the market structure graphs, with profit and deadweight loss areas. Drawing each graph often, and naming every curve and corner, helps most.