Score Higher on AP US Government 2024: MCQ Tips from Students

Multiple Choice Questions

This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students are given 55 multiple choice questions (some individual, and some grouped) and are asked to describe and explain political concepts, apply Supreme Court decisions to other scenarios, interpret data, and analyze foundational documents.
• 50% of Exam Score
• Spend less than 1 min per question → only 70 minutes given!

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💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high level things to know:

• Pay attention to time! At most a question should take a minute and a half to complete all questions during the 70 minutes, but this doesn’t mean spend only a minute and a half on questions. Mark an answer on the test booklet and move on. Try not to second guess yourself, generally your gut instinct is right on the first try!
• Don’t be afraid to skip a question and come back to it later. Sometimes, reading and working through some of the other questions can jog your memory or clarify your thinking about a question you skipped.
• Definitely know the 10 amendments well. And your required court cases. Make up acronyms or something to help you remember the content—there’s many nuances to the content.
  • For example: to remember that federalist 10 was about factions, I used fact10ns.
• Practice lots of AP Questions—they are genuinely super helpful.
• Heimler or Carey Lamanna are amazing YouTube resources!
• Don’t overthink! There will be some questions that are very straightforward and is simply to test to see if you know the definition of a term. Using the process of limitation for questions you are unsure about, will increase your likelihood of getting it correct as there are usually one or two obviously misleading/incorrect answers.
• Memorize the powers and structure of the government by heart as it will help with questions that ask about the relationship between certain branches or the powers of certain bodies.
• It’s okay to not know the answers to some of the questions. You can’t get hung up on some of the questions and waste your time trying to figure it out. It may come to you in a minute so just keep on moving so you can have some time at the end to check it over and also come back to the ones you may not know.
• Cross something off the MOMENT you see an inaccuracy. Trying to read too much into the answer choices will just confuse you about what they mean and could lead you to getting a wrong answer.
• Use AP Classroom’s practice MCQs to familiarize yourself with the style and topics that are usually covered within the MCQ section. It also allows you to test your knowledge and put your skills into practice.
• You have to know the CED. The multiple choice answers will embody the course theme present in each topic. So if the multiple choice question is asking about content from Topic 2.1, whatever theme is utilized in 2.1 will have an answer in that thematic sense.

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🫧Before you Bubble

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start answering?

• Briefly go over in your mind the main concepts of each unit, and some minute details that they should be looking for.
• Write down anything important you think you might forget.
  • There are 9 documents, 14 (15) court cases, and 27 amendments— scribble down your worst few.
• For stimulus questions, always look at the title, date, and author of the excerpt or graph! Graders want you to notice the box of information at the bottom of each stimulus, because they contextualize the question. Make sure to write down general perspectives or motives the author or source might have.
  • Extra information that may answer a question is occasionally included in the source descriptions— while more common in the histories, the government descriptors occasionally give away MCQ questions as well
• Each MCQ generally boils down to one vocabulary term/court case/concept. Use this to narrow down your answer.

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🤔 Understanding the Sources

• When given a stimulus, look at the questions related to that stimulus first. This way, when you are looking at the stimulus (graph, chart, etc.) you know exactly what information you should be looking for.
  • Additionally, when looking at the stimulus, try to create a broader context. For example, if the stimulus is a chart with data from the 1950s, write down key events that happened during that time period for you to understand why certain trends may occur.
• Make connections with the required documents and court cases to a big idea! It’s important to understand how and why a required document influences our government today, and how and why court cases were interpreted (especially on what basis).
• Look at the sources! Graders want you to notice the sources and apply the time period and perspective to the question. Knowing the time period can help you understand the political era or motives of the author.
  • If you’ve taken AP English Language, the analysis skills used to quickly review synthesis sources cross apply into government stimuli almost completely, especially for any graphs
• Always read the excerpt or caption to the source. The excerpt or caption of the source will often give you context to the text and help you better understand its purpose.

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🤔 Choosing the Best Answer

• There are usually two similar answers. Try your best to remember supreme court rulings and interpret scenarios in the scope of the constitution and BOR.
• Read carefully. Often, one or more distractors will be wrong because one detail is wrong. For example, “The Senate ratifies a treaty (correct) by a majority vote (incorrect).”
  • Double check any numeric details given in a response— the place and thing are usually consistent in more than one answer, but the numbers are usually the giveaway (ie “majority vote” here)
• Ensure that no parts of your answer selected contradicts itself. For example, if you feel that a certain SCOTUS case is the correct answer, ensure that the reasoning matches the answer case.