Score Higher on AP World History 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 asked to answer questions (usually in sets of 3-4) based around specific given visual and written sources
• 40% of Exam Score
• 55 questions
• 55 minutes, or 1 min per question

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💭 General Advice

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

• Make sure to read the question carefully! Highlight or underline any time-periods or details the question is asking for.
• Make sure not to spend too much time on each of the questions. If you’re stuck, mark any questions you are unsure of to come back to later.
• Get used to the pressure. Practice answering questions within the time limit before you take on the test.
• Efficiently managing your time is a crucial part to taking the exam. Always watch the clock while taking it and keep track of how long you’re spending on each question.
  • That being said, don’t watch the clock too closely! Being too aware can ultimately cause stress and slow you down. Instead, trust yourself, and look at the clock after every section. If you feel like you’re taking too long on a question, move on.
• Trust your gut! You have learned this information!
• Make sure to get lots of rest before the day of the exam! The exam can be more draining than you think.
• Don’t try and learn all the content a month before the exam. During the school year, make sure you actually learn the content as you go! Everything in this course and exam builds off of previous events. By learning as you go, you can just review at the very end instead of being stressed about learning new content.
• As a good review prior to the exam, try drawing pictures, maps, and/or mind maps to connect common themes across cultures and time periods.
• MCQs are somewhat in chronological order on the AP exam, so that will help you understand and contextualize what exactly is going on. You have to be quick for the multiple choice section but practicing daily will get you ready.
• Many of these questions can be answered using context clues, so even if you don’t know the exact answer you can use the process of elimination and other knowledge to narrow it down.
• If you don’t do too well on this section you can always redeem yourself in the writing portion. So don’t just try to memorize certain details, make sure that throughout the school year you take the time to understand concepts and make connections.
• Fill in all the questions, even if you don’t know the answer. It’s better to have a guess than no answer. Remember, the AP exam doesn’t deduct points for incorrect answers.
• Study the overall time period of each topic that you learn about. This way, you will see that exam questions will be assigned to a specific point in time, and you will know what happened in that time period.
• After learning each unit or major topic, try to summarize it by talking about what happened in every part of the world during that event (ex. Imperialism in every place).
• When studying, take each place in the world and write what happened from 1200 until then in order to see the major history that happened in that place. This will also help by allowing you to compare when each section of the world interacted with the other.
• 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?

• First, read all the questions for the section, and then spend the time reading through the sources. By spending a little bit more time reading the source, you will understand it better and perhaps even find the answer you are looking for.
  • Make sure to skim the sources before answering any related questions. If you are short on time make sure to at least pinpoint the author and the time period.
• After skimming through sources, I recommend answering questions that you feel cover the topic that you are most familiar and comfortable with. However, feel free to either take on the harder questions first and then answer the easier ones later. Keeping momentum is a big part in taking this exam.
• Take a minute or two to write a simple cheat sheet for yourself. Things you tend to forget, things you mix up, etc! It makes it easier to have a slight fallback than none at all.
• Take a deep breath and remind yourself that you’ve been studying all year for this exam. Organize your space, relax your shoulders, and bring a hair tie to fidget with if that helps you think.
• Make sure that you give yourself a “letter of the day” you may not be able to answer every question or might not have the slightest clue what the answer is, so having a letter that you pick every time this happens can be beneficial so you’re not wasting time on those questions.
• Sometimes you can answer questions before even reading your possible answer choices. This is not a surefire method but if you can recall something specific before you read the choices, you will be less likely to be distracted by answers that are placed there to throw you off.
• If you understand what happens in the time period, you can get a general understanding of what the answer should be so you won’t fall for other answers that are included to confuse you.

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📖 Understanding the Sources

• Even if the question doesn’t ask you to, contextualize the source for your own benefit & understanding! This doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, just remember to identify the time period, occasion, author, audience, etc. Often times, this information is located at the bottom of the source.
  • This will help you cross out answers that don’t go with that particular time period, empire, state, event, etc.
  • Time period should give you a big enough hint. If you’re still lost, read carefully to connect the dots and/or look at the details in the image provided, as there may be things you probably did not see the first time looking at it.
• If you can’t seem to figure out what a source is trying to say or imply, focus mainly on the author and time.
• Make sure to take into account the changes and continuities occurring between different time periods and how it would affect the author’s opinion on the topic (ex. a recent change in a belief could leave the author questioning the validity of the belief). Also remember, History flows in a line, not blocks; ideas/events that occurred in one period may also affect another period.
• Some sources try to make you confused and sometimes lead to wrong answers. To counter this, simplifying the source and contextualizing will make you understand the source even better. Try to focus on the main points such as the author of the source, the date of the source, which is already a big hint. By these two huge clues, you will be able to simplify the source and lead to your answer!
• On the side of the source, write some bullet points about the main points or ideas. Making an overview like this helps clear your head and streamlines information to remember for the MCQS that follow. Also, write some outside information about that source from memory. What led to the event discussed? What happened after? Important people or events? This will help narrow down your answers.
• Also, do not be discouraged if you don’t know the answer to a question, they are meant to be challenging. Know that to get a 5, you do not need to get every question right. It’s not about what you don’t know, it’s what you do know.
• Remember the acronym HIPP when analyzing sources, ask yourself what the Historical context, Intended audience, Purpose, and Point of view of the source are.
• When reading, underline ideas that stand out and seem as if this was something you covered during a unit. For example, if the source is talking about Enlightenment ideals (either pro or against it) underline them and look at the sentences before and after to see what context and/or reasoning they provide.
• Read the question before reading the source so you can read the source with a specific context in mind.
• If the question refers to a specific paragraph, you don’t need to read the whole thing. Just read that paragraph.

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🤔 Choosing the Best Answer

• When you are conflicted between answer choices, think through the timeline that events happened in— sometimes the answer choices have events that are too old or too early in the historical context of your source and the question.
  • Use your context clues. Things such as dates, people, certain events, ideas, etc. provided in the question can help give you perspective to the right answer.
• Process of elimination is your friend. Don’t be afraid to cross out answers that happened in another time period or part of the world and aren’t relevant to the question at hand.
  • There are usually two answer choices that are outright wrong and one that seems right but doesn’t answer the question.
• If you’ve answered a question but you’re deciding to change the answer to one you think is better, it’s better to leave it unless you are certain it is the right answer. You have to trust your gut; it is better to take the chance of getting the answer wrong than to change a right answer to a wrong one.
• Trust in yourself and take your guess! You’ve studied through the whole world history subject, so you should be able to use the process of elimination and take an educated guess.
• Don’t second guess yourself! You only have so much time per question. If you read the question and one answer jumps out at you, that’s likely the right one. You’ve been preparing the whole year for this exam.
• Trust your instincts because you've studied and you’ve got this. Look for any patterns in the answer choices but avoid overthinking; go with your gut if you feel confident about an answer.
• Avoid any answers that have extreme words like “always” or “sometimes.” There’s a chance that may be incorrect.
• Make sure that the answer choice is completely factual, since they will try to trick you with things that never happened.
• Even answer choices that have AP World-related keywords are purposefully put there to confuse you since there may be a word related to the subject but is not the correct answer.
• Test-writers try to make the answer sound subtle and worded in a way you would not expect, so keep an open mind.