Question 1
The system described in the excerpt is best understood as a response to
Is AP World History hard?
Most students who sit it get a 3 or higher: 64.3% in May 2025 and 66% in 2026. A 5 is harder, at 13.9% in 2025. The difficulty is less memorizing dates than reading sources quickly, comparing regions and building an argument from evidence.
| Scored 3 or higher in 2026 | 66% |
|---|---|
| Scored 3 or higher in 2025 | 64.3% of 411,547 students |
| Scored 5 in 2025 | 13.9% |
| Mean score in 2025 | 3.16 |
What makes it hard
- Breadth: more than 800 years, from c. 1200 to the present, across every region of the world, in nine units.
- Reading sources: the multiple-choice sets are built on sources, so you must place each one in context and judge its point of view in about a minute.
- Comparison: questions ask how developments in one region resembled or differed from those in another, so knowing one region well is not enough.
- Writing: the document-based question and the long essay are scored point by point against a rubric, so a good essay without a clear thesis or sourcing loses points.
What makes it easier
- The rubrics are published, so each point can be practiced on its own.
- Units 3 to 6 carry about half of the multiple choice, so you know where to spend time.
- The same few reasoning moves, causation, comparison and continuity and change, run through every part.
How the 2025 results break down
- A 5: 13.9% (57,107 students)
- A 4: 33.4% (137,588 students)
- A 3: 17.0% (69,974 students)
- A 2: 26.5% (109,098 students)
- A 1: 9.2% (37,780 students)
Try 2 questions
A historian's interpretation
Most Europeans in the thirteenth century lived on the land. On a typical manor, serfs farmed the lord's fields as well as their own strips, owed him labor and a share of their harvest, and could not leave without his permission. In return the lord offered protection and justice in his court. Above the manor, kings depended on great nobles who held land in exchange for military service, so royal power was limited and Europe remained divided among many competing rulers. The Roman Catholic Church, with its own courts, taxes and monasteries, was the one institution that reached across western Europe.
Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer, on the plague in Florence, c. 1350
I say, then, that the years . . . of the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God had attained to the number of one thousand three hundred and forty-eight, when into the notable city of Florence, fair over every other of Italy, there came the death-dealing pestilence, which, through the operation of the heavenly bodies or of our own iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the parts of the East and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable number of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to another, had now unhappily spread towards the West.
Question 2
The spread of the epidemic described in the excerpt most directly resulted from
Next step
College Board's AP World History: Modern score distributions
Questions people ask
What percentage of students pass AP World History?
In May 2025, 64.3% of the 411,547 students who took AP World History: Modern scored 3 or higher; in 2026 the share was 66%. Many US colleges grant credit or placement for 3 and above, but each college sets its own policy.
What share of AP World History students earn a 5?
13.9% in May 2025 (57,107 students) and 14% in 2026.
Is AP World History harder than other AP history courses?
It covers the whole world over more than 800 years and has two essays. Steady practice with sources, comparisons across regions and the rubrics matters more than memorizing dates.