In May, the APUSH testing room seems to be carrying the weight of a full academic year. The standard institutional desks are set up in rows, pencils and exam booklets are provided ahead of time, and the proctor’s instructions are given in the flat monotone of someone who has given this speech numerous times. Three hours and fifteen minutes to go. There are four parts. Two pieces of writing.
Well-prepared kids are already aware of this. Students who are well-prepared and have an understanding of timing—those who have practiced each segment against a real clock rather than just studying the material and hoping for the best—tend to enter the room with a different kind of quiet confidence than those who have not.
Section I is divided into two sections and lasts for ninety-five minutes. First, there are 55 multiple-choice questions in 55 minutes, each lasting one minute. Each question is based on a historical source, such as a main document, a secondary passage, a map, or a chart, which must be read and understood in order to be answered. The majority of APUSH students routinely underestimate this section in their preparation, which accounts for 40% of the final score and is the exam’s single highest-weighted component.
The following is the short answer section, which lasts 40 minutes and consists of three questions—two required and one selected from a pair—each of which calls for succinct written answers divided into three sections. Just precise, concise responses that show the student has grasped historical ideas and procedures from a wide range of eras—no thesis or lengthy debate. The approximate time allotted for each question is thirteen minutes, which is sufficient to write three concentrated phrases per sub-part but insufficient to draft and edit lengthy paragraphs.
Section II begins with a 15-minute reading period after the intermission. More strategic planning should be done during this time than is typically done. Prior to writing, students must read, annotate, and arrange seven historical texts for the Document-Based Question, which is the first in Section II and accounts for 25% of the final score. For seven documents, fifteen minutes equates to only two minutes each document, which is hardly sufficient to identify the argument of each source, record its historical context, and indicate the sourcing opportunities that the rubric honors.
Weaker DBQs are typically produced by students who just read during the reading session without making any plans. Students gain a significant edge in the next sixty minutes if they spend those fifteen minutes to actively annotate, determine which documents support which side of the debate, and develop a thesis structure before writing starts.
The last question is the Long Essay Question, which allots 40 minutes for a single essay selected from three prompts based on various historical eras. Students who came at 8 a.m. have been seated for almost three hours by this time in the exam, and the LEQ is the segment when attention varies the most.
Although it doesn’t determine the conclusion on its own, the 15 percent score weighting indicates that it matters—skipping it or writing anything half-formed is an obvious consequence. Students who practice all four components sequentially, rather of just the essays separately, are typically the ones that manage their time through the first three sections with enough left over to produce a properly argued LEQ.
Watching APUSH students talk about their exam experiences afterward makes it difficult to ignore the fact that the three-hour-fifteen format is frequently discussed as a timing issue rather than a content issue. It is possible to educate the history. It is also possible to teach the speed of 60 seconds per source-based multiple-choice question, but only with practice.
Students who haven’t trained themselves to use the 15-minute DBQ reading session as an organized opportunity rather than a rest period often arrive at the writing phase without the plan that the 60-minute period demands. The test is lengthy. Additionally, it specifies how that length should be used in each part.
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