AP Comparative Gov Cheat Sheet and Review Chart

What is CompGov?

The entire point of this Comparative Government is to compare and contrast different governance structures around the world. So, yeah, it's all right there in the name.

The countries this course focuses on are Great Britain, Iran, Nigeria, Mexico, China, and Russia. You get to learn all about the differences and similarities about the governments you hear about in the news and the governments that don't get a lot of coverage. If you're American, that's every other government 🐸☕️. 

That's exactly what makes this course so interesting! You get to learn about how governments across the globe function (or, in some cases, don't 😬 . . . big oof). 

AP Comparative Government Cram Chart

AP Comp Gov - PDF Link Here!

The Comparative Government AP Exam is made up of 2 sections: Multiple Choice (MCQ) and Free Response (FRQ)! Make sure to check out our awesome Cheat Sheet Review Chart and Learn the Format of the Exam below!

Multiple Choice Section

The multiple choice section comes first on the exam. It has made up of 55 Questions, and you'll have an hour to answer them.

MCQ Details

Each question is going to have 4 answer options. That starts on the 2020-21 exam, whereas in the past, there were 5 answer options.

There's also a few more changes to the 2020-21 Exam:

• Exam will have 2 text-based sources, each accompanied by 2–3 questions.
• Exam will have 3 quantitative sources, each accompanied by 2–3 questions

FRQ Section Structure

You might be wondering what the FRQ section looks like, especially because every AP exam is slightly different in terms of timing.

You'll have 90 minutes to do this section of the CompGov exam, and it makes up 50% of your exam score.

Nitty Gritty Details

The FRQ section of the CompGov exam has 4 questions, and each one of them is a different style of question. Here are the types of questions:

• 1 conceptual analysis question - In this question, you'll describe or explain a political concept in one of the 6 Comp Gov course countries.
• 1 quantitative analysis question - In this question, you'll be given some kind of visual stimulus that you'll have to analyze to explain a trend or pattern that you can connect to the course concepts.
• 1 comparative analysis question - You'll compare and contrast political concepts/institutions/policies in different course countries.
• 1 argument essay: a new question type where you'll write an argument-based essay (P.S. you can get a general idea of what this may look like by looking at the US Government past exam questions 👀)

Each question may have a few different parts, and past CompGov questions are structured like that. Make sure to take a look at them to get a better idea of what your exam will look like