<p>I will be taking APUSH exam in May 2015 as a sophomore and wanted to know if the test has become easier or harder.</p>
<p>it is one of the harder of the APs. Keep on top of the work, take advantage of online resources and study books and you should do fine. </p>
<p>The test is going to be different. No one will know if it is easier or harder until they take it, but IMHO, it’ll likely be harder. They are making the MC section shorter, removing one of the essays and replacing it with 4? short answers. This means more time formulating thoughts and focusing on big picture and less factual info. It also means that doing very well on the MC can’t make up for poor essays.</p>
<p>Well the College Board and my new teacher have emphasized that APUSH will require students to connect concepts and themes of the history learned rather than having memorization be key (more like the only key). So I think that one will actually have to learn to write better since you need to not only include detail, but weed out the unimportant details. But the short answers seem like they will help one adjust to getting to point while including historically accurate information that is extremely relevant to the writing task. It will be more difficult, but worth the effort. It seems like the exam will be a fun challenge.</p>
<p>How were the exams like before in terms of difficulty? @malpal97 @PolyglotGal </p>
<p>@lovelyshores To be honest with you, I have no idea, My school has just always emphasized that the AP humanities courses are a challenge to begin with. </p>
<p>Nobody will know if the test is more or less difficult until next May. However, the percentage of 5’s after the redesign of the chemistry and biology tests plummeted after the redesign, although there appears to be no statistical difference on the other redesigned exams.</p>
<p>No one really knows until they take it, and unless they take it twice, it is hard to compare. However,imo they are shifting to become slightly more difficult. For instance, a few years back, I took the APUSH exam without taking the course and I thought it was really easy. I later found out I got a 5. The history teacher commented that most people got 4s or 5s except for one person, who got a 3. However, the year before, after getting the exam results back, I heard that more people thought it was difficult or “meh” from the APUSH students, and there were more 3s. Given how the consensus from the class before thought it was relatively easy, I can only assume this means that the test has gotten somewhat harder.</p>