AP U.S. History

The APUSH exam — nine periods, four question types

AP U.S. History is a college-level survey of the American past from 1491 to the present, built on the College Board's Course and Exam Description: nine chronological periods, eight thematic threads, and a set of historical reasoning skills tested through four question types — multiple choice, short answer, the document-based question, and the long essay. This journey walks the full arc — contact and colonization, revolution and constitution, expansion and civil war, industrialization and reform, the world wars and the Cold War, the civil rights era and the modern age — and teaches the exam craft (thesis, contextualization, evidence, sourcing, and complexity) that turns knowing the story into scoring the ballot.