AP exams are not curved against the other students who sat them. Raw points are weighted into a composite, and the composite is converted to the 1 to 5 scale with cut scores the College Board sets for that exam and that year through a standard-setting study. The College Board does not publish the cut scores. What follows is what it does publish, plus this site's estimates, labelled as such.
What the College Board says about the curve
In its July 2025 post on scoring, the College Board writes that it does not grade AP students on a curve; it requires them to meet an academic standard to earn a 3 or higher. Since 2024 that standard has been set by what it calls evidence-based standard setting: large panels of college professors rate the exam against their own courses (773 professors at 524 colleges for English Language in 2025), and the score boundaries are placed where students demonstrate the knowledge expected for credit. The post gives the composite example of 109 points out of 120.
The practical consequence is that the share of students at each score can move a lot in one year without the paper changing. The table at the bottom of this page shows every exam's 2025 share of 5s and of 3 or higher beside the estimated cutoffs used on this site.
The formula
Composite = sum over sections of (raw score ÷ section maximum) × section weight × 100. The sheets on this site put the composite on a 0 to 100 scale so the cutoffs read as percentages. An APUSH student with 40 of 55 multiple choice (40 % weight), 6 of 9 short answer (20 %), 5 of 7 on the DBQ (25 %) and 4 of 6 on the long essay (15 %) has 29.1 + 13.3 + 17.9 + 10.0 = 70.3. Whether that is a 5 or a 4 depends on where the cut score falls that year.
All subjects, three years
| Year | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Mean |
|---|
| 2025 | 18.0% | 27.4% | 26.1% | 18.1% | 10.5% | 3.24 |
| 2024 | 17.1% | 25.2% | 24.4% | 19.6% | 13.8% | 3.12 |
| 2023 | 15.6% | 21.1% | 25.1% | 20.4% | 17.8% | 2.96 |
Source: College Board, AP Score Distributions, All Subjects 2005-2025, read 10 Oct 2026. Across all exams the share of 1s fell from 17.8 % in 2023 to 10.5 % in 2025 and the mean rose from 2.96 to 3.24.
Every exam: estimated cutoffs and the 2025 results
Cutoffs are this site's estimates of the composite (0 to 100) needed for each score; the two right-hand columns are the College Board's published May 2025 distribution. Click an exam for its format, the full distribution, credit policies and the reasoning behind its lines.
Questions about the AP curve
- Is there a curve on AP exams?
- Not in the sense of grading against the other students in the room. The College Board's July 2025 post says plainly that it does not grade AP students on a curve: raw points are combined into a composite, and the composite is converted to the 1 to 5 scale using cut scores set by a standard-setting study. What people call the curve is that conversion, and it is set per exam and per year.
- What is the AP curve formula?
- Each section's raw score is weighted by its published share of the exam (for example 50 % multiple choice, 50 % free response) and the weighted parts are added into a composite. The College Board's own example is 109 points out of 120 possible. Cut scores then map composite ranges to 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. The weights are published in every course and exam description; the cut scores are not.
- Which AP exam has the easiest curve?
- There is no published cut-score table to compare, so the only fair measure is the published distribution. In May 2025 the highest shares of 3 or higher were Chinese Language (89.2 %), Research (88.5 %), Spanish Language (85.0 %), Seminar (83.4 %) and Precalculus (80.8 %). The lowest were Latin (58.6 %), Statistics (60.3 %), Music Theory (60.5 %), Computer Science Principles (61.9 %) and Calculus AB (64.2 %). Those numbers describe who takes each exam as much as the exam itself.
- Does the AP curve change every year?
- The cut scores are set after each administration, so yes, and in 2025 several moved a long way. The College Board attributes the shift to its evidence-based standard setting. English Language went from 54.6 % to 74.3 % at 3 or higher, Physics 1 from 47.3 % to 67.3 %, Environmental Science from 54.1 % to 69.2 %, Psychology from 61.7 % to 70.5 % and Human Geography from 56.1 % to 64.7 %. Others barely moved: Calculus AB was 64.4 % then 64.2 %.
- Where do the cutoffs on this site come from?
- They are estimates, reconstructed from released exams and the published distributions, and every sheet says so. The table on this page prints them beside each exam's 2025 results so you can see what was assumed. Each exam page explains how its own lines were set.