AP Art History
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[edit] The Course
The Art History AP course is designed to allow students to examine major forms of artistic expression relevant to a variety of cultures evident in wide variety of periods from present times into the past. In this course, students acquire an ability to examine works of art critically, with intelligence and sensitivity, and to articulate their thoughts and experiences.
[edit] Topics
The ETS's framework for the exam is as follows:
Ancient through Medieval: 30%
- Greece and Rome (10-15%)
- Early Christian, Byzantine, Early Medieval (5-10%)
- Romanesque (3-7%)
- Gothic (7-10%)
Renaissance to Present: 50%
- Fourteenth Through Sixteenth Centuries (12-17%)
- Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (10-15%)
- Nineteenth Century (10-15%)
- Twentieth Century (10-15%)
Beyond European Tradition: 20%
- Africa (including Egypt); the Americas; Asia; Near East, Oceania, and global Islamic tradition
[edit] The Exam
The AP Art History exam is exactly three hours long. It consists of 115 multiple-choice questions, seven short essays, and two long essays. Part A of the multiple-choice section includes four sets of slide-based questions that will present either a single image or two images of different works of art. Part B of the multiple choice section contains 85 questions, some of which do not pertain to any specific image, and involve the basic recalling of facts. Other questions, though, refer to black and white images within the test booklet. Overall, the multiple-choice section of the exam takes one hour to complete.
The seven short essays involve responding to an image or images (projected on a screen) and/or a quotation (printed in the test booklet). Students must demonstrate their knowledge of trends in art history, identifying key characteristics of the works of different periods and cultures. This portion of the exam also takes one hour, with either five or ten minutes allotted for each short essay question.
The two long essays require that a student be able to think of his or her own examples of works of art that exemplify certain themes in art history. Students are also expected to draw on works from beyond the European tradition for at least one of the essays. The two essays take 30 minutes each. One is written following the exam's 115 multiple-choice questions but before the seven short essays. The other comes during the exam's final segment, after the seven short essays.
[edit] Scoring
The multiple-choice section of the exam overalls accounts for 40% of a student's score. The free-response is worth 60%. For the former, each correctly answered multiple-choice question is worth a point. A wrong question subtracts 1/3 of a point from the raw score. Omitted questions do not affect the raw score either way. A perfect raw score, therefore, is 115, which is multiplied by a factor of .69565 for a total of 80. For the free-response section, each short essay is graded on a scale of 0 to 4. After totaling the score on the seven essays, a factor of 2.5 is used to weight the section on a scale of 0 to 70. Finally, the two long essays count for 25 points each. Thus, the highest score obtainable is a 200.
While the criteria varies from year to year, receiving a "5" from the ETS usually entails earning around 70% of the total points on the test, or having a raw score of 140.
[edit] 2005 Statistics
In 2005, 16,785 students took the art history exam at 1,230 schools worldwide. The mean score was a 3.10.
| Score | Percent |
|---|---|
| 5 | 13.8% |
| 4 | 25.2% |
| 3 | 30.4% |
| 2 | 17.6% |
| 1 | 12.9% |
