Score Higher on AP US 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 analyze historical texts, interpretations, and evidence.
• Primary and secondary sources, images, graphs, and maps are included.
• 40% of Exam Score
• 55 Minutes for 55 Questions, 1 minute/question

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💭 General Advice

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

• If you feel stuck on an MCQ, bookmark it and come back to it with any extra time. Chances are, if you are confused, there will be another question that will jog your memory on a particular subject.
• Don’t look at the questions until you have fully read the source at least once. When you see the questions first, you lose any control you have over the passage, and reading it can become more of a search for information than an attempt to actually understand it, which is what you need to do.
• Always, always, always trust your gut! If you studied and are familiar with the test structure, 90% of the time your first instinct is the best choice. Keep moving forward, even if you don’t know, but fill in every question. If you have time, go back, but the test is not structured for that, so don’t worry if you don’t!
• Do your best to put history in chronological order, so that when you look at a question, and they ask you about an event at a particular time, you can remember based on what happened previously, which was the cause, or what happened in the future as a result of the event.
• Use your time wisely, keep an eye on the time and do not spend too much time on any one question. If you are stumped, come back to it. Besides, a later question might give you the information you need to answer the skipped question.
• Don’t get too bogged down by what relates to what’s specifically in the passage your MCQ references. What’s more often correct is something accurate that is supported somehow by the passage but is about the general development at the time of the passage.
• Always be sure of the time period, there are many similar events that happen in history and some answer will be from those similar events, if you know the time period, you can eliminate 2 of the answer choices.
• You should practice timed MCQ answering beforehand, even giving yourself less time than in the test. That way, on test day, you’ll be fast enough to finish answering questions before time runs out. Then you can go back through what you’ve answered and check on any answers you weren’t sure about. I took the test online, where there’s a bookmark tool. Bookmark questions in which you weren’t solid about your answer when first answering, but then move on. At the end of all the questions, study the bookmarked questions to review your answers.

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🫧Before you Bubble

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

• Take a deep breath! it’s a million times harder to focus and lock in if your brain is scattered. Use the last few minutes to breathe, center yourself, and prepare. There’s nothing you can do within the last few minutes before the test starts to be more content prepared. Take that time to prepare yourself and remember that is it just a test.
• Try to slow down! You spent an entire school year preparing for this, you can do it! Get in the testing mindset, take a sip of water, and lock in.
• When looking for the correct answer, make sure to underline key terms like names, dates, and events.
• Don’t be afraid to mark up the test booklet. Circling, underlining, and noting things down might help you more than you realize, especially if you feel like you’re stuck.
• Get comfortable and be excited, this is your time to shine! Show everyone what you have worked so hard for!

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📖Understanding the Sources

• Always look for the author and year first! It’s helpful to understand the context of a source before observing it. The more context and understanding of a source you can find, the faster you can make good connections. On a DBQ, it’s okay to not fully understand a source! Work with what you have and go from there, understanding will probably come the further you get.
• In addition to this, make sure you underline the important stuff. It’s ok to not fully understand the source/document, but it helps a lot to still be able to pick information out from them.
• Source the information first. Read the passage, look at the image, and then write down your first thoughts. Next, reading all the questions related to a source can really help to narrow down your understanding if you are lost.

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🤔Choosing the Best Answer

• With every MCQ, College Board usually has two outlier answers that are very different (and incorrect) and two that are very similar, typically both correct. The game is to pick the most correct answer, or the most specific answer. Even if two answers are right, go for the option that is the most specific.
• Always circle or make your chosen answer clear in your testing booklet, not just the scantron, that way if you get the chance to look back at your starred question, you can easily see what you were thinking/the two answers you were in between.
• The online test also has an option for crossing out answers. Remember, what happened specifically at the time of this passage? What development is this passage referring to?
• Context! Pay attention to dates. Hopefully when studying, you jotted down the big years/dates to remember. Go back to your knowledge of those dates and try to place the passage or question in the context of those years.
  • For example, if the source was written in the 1860s, you have the context of the Civil War to help guide you in answering it. It’s ok if you don’t recognize the name of who wrote the passage or if you didn’t learn about what is being discussed in it, so long as you place that source in the context of the year it was written. That is what’s really going to help you understand and answer the question.