AP

Accelerating Our Transition to Digital AP Exams

Trevor Packer

Trevor Packer

  • July 25, 2024

Students and teachers work hard in AP® courses and deserve the confidence that other students aren’t gaining an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, this year, we saw a rise in bad actors compromising AP Exam content for financial gain.

We were able to avoid large-scale cancellations only because none of the compromised material was distributed broadly. But we believe that paper AP testing will continue to be vulnerable to theft and cheating.

We are getting ahead of the issue by accelerating our transition to digital AP Exams. Starting in May 2025, we will discontinue standard paper testing for 28 AP Exams—these exams will move to the Bluebook™ digital testing application. Digital exams are much more secure than shipping paper exams in boxes to thousands of locations weeks in advance.

In addition to ensuring exam security, digital exams have other advantages: 

  • Digital AP testing is streamlined: No more lengthy bubbling and labeling of paper materials before testing can start.
     
  • Digital AP testing is accessible: Bluebook supports testing on commonly used devices and students can use their own or a school-issued device.
     
  • Digital AP testing is student-friendly: Students like the Bluebook interface for the way it helps them focus on the relevant parts of longer reading passages; enables faster writing and editing compared to handwriting; and provides a less stressful testing experience.

Each exam will deliver a customized digital experience, allowing us to offer a course-specific hybrid digital testing approach for subjects that require graphing or symbolic notation.

Fully digital AP subjects for 2025—no paper testing option available except for students approved by College Board to receive a paper exam for digital assessments:

  1. AP African American Studies (U.S. schools only)
  2. AP Art History
  3. AP Comparative Government and Politics
  4. AP Computer Science A
  5. AP Computer Science Principles 
  6. AP English Language and Composition 
  7. AP English Literature and Composition 
  8. AP Environmental Science
  9. AP European History 
  10. AP Human Geography
  11. AP Latin
  12. AP Psychology
  13. AP Seminar
  14. AP United States Government and Politics
  15. AP United States History
  16. AP World History: Modern

Hybrid digital AP subjects for 2025—students will view all of the exam questions in Bluebook but will answer free-response questions in a paper booklet as usual:

  1. AP Biology 
  2. AP Calculus AB
  3. AP Calculus BC
  4. AP Chemistry
  5. AP Macroeconomics
  6. AP Microeconomics
  7. AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based
  8. AP Physics 2: Algebra-Based
  9. AP Physics: Electricity and Magnetism
  10. AP Physics: Mechanics
  11. AP Precalculus
  12. AP Statistics

The following subjects will remain unchanged for 2025, but will transition to Bluebook digital testing in the future:

  1. AP Chinese Language and Culture
  2. AP French Language and Culture
  3. AP German Language and Culture
  4. AP Italian Language and Culture
  5. AP Japanese Language and Culture
  6. AP Spanish Language and Culture
  7. AP Spanish Literature and Culture
  8. AP Music Theory

AP students will be able to access free online practice resources. Test previews will be available for all subjects on Bluebook later in the 2024-25 school year. Students will be able to access free online practice exams, quizzes, and other teacher-created assessments in AP Classroom.

Accelerating the digital transition will help us preserve the integrity of the AP Exam experience for students and educators. We understand that this is a significant change, and we will work closely with the AP community throughout the year to ensure that schools have the information and resources they need to prepare for digital AP Exams. College Board will provide schools with loaner devices and Wi-Fi supports as needed.

Visit AP Central for more information. 

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