Score Higher on AP US History 2024: Tips for DBQs

Document-Based Question (DBQ)

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 will be presented with seven documents that give various perspectives on a historical development or process and asked to develop an argument based on these documents and their own knowledge.
• 25% of Exam Score
• 60 minutes recommended to write, including a 15-minute reading period
• Scored on a 7 point rubric
  • Thesis/Claim (1)
  • Contextualization (1)
  • Evidence from 4 documents (2)
  • Evidence beyond documents (1)
  • Analyze 2 documents (1)
  • Complexity (1)

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💭General Advice

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

• Annotate! When annotating your documents, it might help to keep in the mind the acronym of “SPICE”: Social, Political, Intellectual, Cultural, and Economic.
• The introduction is usually the best place to provide background information and historical context.
• Ever had the issue of opening your DBQ, reading through all the documents, and then realizing you have no idea what to write? It sounds counterintuitive, but a strategy to help combat this is just to start writing! Oftentimes, writing will get your brain going, and it’ll help in jogging your memory.
• When quoting a specific passage/quotation from a document, it helps to introduce the quotation—although it won’t get you points, it’ll help your writing sound much smoother.
• If struggling with remembering certain developments/periods, try to describe out loud the events in your own words and jot down your own little “timeline” in a google doc and repeat it over and over—make it funny, interesting, whatever—this way, you’ll remember important events and topics and can map your timeline onto your DBQ—just make sure you don’t make it sound too informal.
• When reading the DBQ documents, take notes on paper on what each one’s point is, and, if it applies, whether they are positive or negative about a historical development. This strategy usually lets you read the documents less times and still know where to reference them, thus saving time.
• Practice, practice, practice! If your teacher isn’t already making you do more than one practice DBQ in the year, try to time yourself and do one on your own. Even if you don’t make or barely make the time requirement, when you keep practicing DBQs, you get faster at writing. This applies to AP veterans, too, since there often isn’t timed writing in the summer.
• Even though the rubric only requires analyzing two documents and using four, I really recommend using all the documents and analyzing at least three—you never know where your points are going to come from.
• You truly know more than you think you do—if you think you don’t know something well enough to score well, if you can remember even just the vague idea of what it was and who was involved (for example, if you barely remember the causes of the Seven Years War and that is the DBQ but you remember that it was about land and that it was pre-Revolutionary War), you can still score points!

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✏️ Before you Write

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

• Contextualizing the period your DBQ is referring to is extremely important, and can often help to warm your brain up to prepare for the bulk of your essay, so work on your contextualization skills.
• Try to spend the first few minutes making bullet points to the side listing any important events or developments you could relate to the prompt, even before or after the time period if you have to!
• When you receive the prompt, try to quickly recall all the developments and nuances you learned in the period it references, and then focus yourself in whatever way possible to start reading the documents. Taking notes on the documents is often when you technically start writing.
• After reading the prompt, divide up the sources into two columns, one column should be the sources which support your main claim, and the other column should have the sources that go against your argument. If you end up having more documents in the second column, that’s okay! You can switch your thesis to arguing for that point instead. (This is why it’s so helpful to outline your sources beforehand, so you don’t start writing the essay and then realize that your evidence supports a different claim.) Then, the other (smaller) column that has proof to refute your claim can be used for the complexity point.
• Next to each source in your columns, write out the analyzation tool you will be using (remember HAPPY - historical context, intended audience, purpose, POV, and whY). This outline will set you up well to have an easy time writing the DBQ.
• As soon as you get the documents, understand what larger event each document takes place in and jot down anything you remember about that event. Start grouping together documents based on their broader context to better utilize them.
• Write down every single term you remember from the unit as soon as you see the prompt. Then, cross out every single term that you can’t use, and that makes it easier to bring in the evidence beyond the documents (it’s also helpful to make a t-chart of this to sort them by a counter argument and a main argument!).
• When you look at the documents for the first time, try to write a brief, one sentence summary of the main idea of the document. You can then expand on this when you do your analysis of the documents.

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💡Tips for Earning Each Point

Claim/Thesis

• Make sure your thesis/claim is a defensible and debatable statement.
• It helps to use your thesis as an organizer; grouping the documents based on your reasons/claims, rather than organizing your essay based on documents.
• It can be useful to get confident with certain forms of writing a thesis, such as using a three-prong in which you state the topic, “American National Identity,” make an assertion, “was strengthened and developed form 1800-1855,” then add supporting facts, “ due to unifying factors such as westward expansion, development of technology which shaped everyday life, and the War of 1812.”
• Make sure you’re responding to the exact prompt: evaluating, describing, or any form. It’s a bit formulaic, but sometimes including part of the prompt in your thesis makes it nice and obvious to an AP reader that you are responding to their prompt.
  • For example, “evaluate the extent to which the arrival of Anglo-European settlers affected indigenous populations” (which probably won’t come up in essay form, since it’s so early on) should have a thesis that starts with “Anglo-European colonists greatly affected indigenous populations by encroaching on their land, introducing to them new plants and animals, and releasing new diseases across the Americas.” You could also argue that they didn’t affect indigenous populations much at all, so express as such.
• If you want to present a counterargument, how you present it in the thesis is important. Putting it at the beginning of the thesis and thus at the beginning of the body of the essay would mean you say “Despite [counterargument], [rest of thesis].” Putting it afterward, or more accurately in the middle of the body, say “[thesis], even though [counterargument].” This can also help you get the complexity point.
  • Another way to earn that point is to phrase your thesis as an although statement. For example, if the prompt asks you to identify the cause of the Mexican-American war, write: “Although x was the main cause of the Mexican-American war due to ___, y also contributed to the start of the war by”
  • An example from the 2023 DBQ, where the prompt was: “Evaluate the extent to which definitions of United States citizenship changed from 1865 to 1920”, would be “Some may say that the definition of US citizenship did not drastically change because [insert counterargument], however, the definition of US citizenship did change because [insert main argument].”
• Make sure you’re relating every argument in your body to the thesis!!!
• If the thesis is not defensible, the entirety of your essay will be off-track. Make sure it’s defensible and that it argues a specific claim.

Contextualization

• When given a certain period, try to think of contextualizing as preparing your audience (reader) for the action of the DBQ. For example, if the DBQ prompt is asking about the development of the national identity of the USA from 1800-1855 (2022 DBQ Prompt), set the stage by talking about the formation of the first colonies by Britain and how American colonies became united against Britain tyranny before talking about how the national identity developed.
• When talking about the prompt, start with what preceded it. What had happened that led to the event happening in your prompt? These events MUST somehow connect to your prompt/affect the event you are talking about. Adding all this additional information allows the reader to envision your response in a broader context, lets them understand what was happening outside of your prompt that led to what you are talking about.
• Specifically describe the developments that will relate to your argument later, and only then transition into your thesis.
• Try to know at least a basic idea of what happened in each era of US History. If the DBQ is about government expansion under the Kennedy presidency, and you remember that FDR also expanded the government, you can work that in. Even if it’s not the most scholarly analysis of the events preceding/following the time period, if you show that you have a general idea of what the circumstances were for this event to occur, a reasonable grader should give you the point.

Evidence from the Documents

• Since you must use at least 4 documents to support your argument, it’s wise to just plan to use at least 6 just in case the use of some of your documents isn’t sufficient.
• After reading the prompt and contextualizing, look over the documents and start to figure out how you want to format the bulk of your argument, and make sure this aligns with your initial claim/thesis.
• Take quick notes, but be aware of your time limit. If it’s taken more than 15 minutes to read your documents and take notes on them, you’re starting to run behind.
• Don’t try to force the evidence from the document into a sentence that doesn’t feel like it fits properly, expand on your argument and try to weave the document's evidence into your paragraph when it matches what you’re claiming.
• Though it won’t directly help you get the point, underlining everywhere you use your documents evidence can act as visual aid for the reader and make it easier for them to break down your writing.
• Present your evidence in multiple formats to make the essay look more high-level, i.e. in one paragraph format it as, ““quote” (Doc[ument] X)”, and in the next, “as Document Y argues,” and in another, “[indirectly quoted information] (Document Z).”
• Make sure that once you’ve presented what your evidence is, you specifically relate it to your paragraph’s argument and, by extension, to the thesis. What you mean by inserting evidence isn’t always as obvious to your reader as it is to you.
• You may want to paraphrase the documents, rather than quote, to ensure that you show what you understand about the document. You won’t get points just by quoting.

Evidence from Beyond the Documents

• After you have already started writing and have a good chunk of your essay knocked out, try really hard to recall and pull out any piece of outside evidence you can use to defend the narrative/argument you’ve constructed. If you’ve read through the chapters or gone through Fiveable notes for every unit, odds are you’ll recall at least ONE piece of outside evidence.
• Make sure your AP reader knows what you’re doing. Present your outside evidence like you’re citing another included document, by stating and then analyzing/commenting on its relation to your arguments. Using specific learned vocabulary like the Whigs or the Pullman Strikes elevates the use of this outside evidence.
• Sometimes the outside evidence will fit really well with a document given to you. Other times you can use outside evidence as another proof for your argument.
• Make sure your outside evidence is specific and accurate!
• When bringing in evidence from outside the document, it’s extremely important that it’s not just something you stated for it to count. You have to explain the significance of that event in relation to your prompt/what you are talking about. You have to analyze this as well. Simply stating it will not help you earn this point, it has to be well utilized and fit in your essay.
• Usually the easiest evidence outside the document to bring in is something that caused the event you’re talking about, or happened in relation to the event you’re talking about, or was a cause of the event you are talking about—but remember, it has to be relevant and shouldn’t stray from the prompt.

Analysis of Documents

• Here’s a handy acronym: HIPP (Historical Context, Intended Audience, Purpose, POV). Or use HAPPY (Historical context, intended Audience, Point of view, Purpose, whY it’s important).
  • Make sure to relate back to the thesis as well. The easiest way to do that is to write: “The fact that this document was written by the President shows that (this event) was caused by political reasons and not social ones.”
• If you can’t understand or break down the ENTIRE text of a certain document, try to find at least one or two sentences that you actually can break down and understand, and contextualize using those sentences. Basically, if you can’t eat the whole pizza, just eat a couple slices!
• This is like a looser form of sourcing, so researching that will absolutely help the skill. Explaining how your evidence supports or furthers your argument/thesis usually by extension analyzes it, so long as you give it a proper few sentences.
• A lot of times it’s easier to analyze documents you are using as a counter argument for the complexity point, since it is easy to invalidate a document. (For example, you can say the author had other motivations, or the speech was only said to please the audience—given that this, of course, is true).
• Give some backstory about your evidence. What was happening during it? If it’s a speech, who it was meant for? What was the point of it? Who wrote it/did it? Point of view is great to use because history is always biased and being able to point out whose action it was and why it matters in relation to the prompt always makes you think about the prompt and truly analyze and understand it. Additionally, it sets you up for the complexity point.
• If you wrote a brief one sentence summary of the main idea of the document when you first got them, you can then expand on this now. It’s very helpful to have that one sentence summary—oftentimes it helps inform the rest of your arguments and you have more time to think about your commentary.

Complexity

• Possible ways to try and earn the complexity point would be to try to analyze causes and effects of whatever your prompt is relating to, relating it to other themes/topics that might have developed in parallel with your topic, or how the topic changed or continued over time.
• If you’re going for this “unicorn” point, try to weave all the info above throughout your essay, but if you’re in a rush for time and feel confident you struck out all the other points, you could expand in a paragraph about the info above in a hail mary effort.
• Using extra (or all of) the documents should get you the point so long as you integrate them properly. Counterarguments are also a great method.
• Try to remember anything and everything about APUSH (that relates to the prompt’s topic), and you’ll better be able to show your complex understanding of the course. What might work well for you is linking the developments in your to present-day events as a form of analysis and argument.
• Set up your complexity point by having a complex thesis! When making an argument, explain your stance, and then the other stance, but why your stance is more relevant. Showing that you understand both sides is usually a really easy way to get the complexity point if done right.
• If you can draw parallels to another period in US history that hasn’t already been talked about (in the context), that really goes a long way.