~21,000 students took the 2026 AP Chinese Language & Culture exam, less than 1% of the U.S. high school population. 70% of the AP Chinese students were heritage speakers of Chinese. 

Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ):

• Multiple-choice performance was consistently strong with students earning, on average, ~85% of the MCQ points across all 15 content and skill subsections.
• Students did exceptionally well on Unit 4 questions (How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives), with AP 4s and AP 5s typically answering 100% of these questions right.
• The most demanding MCQ subsection was Making Connections; AP 5s were the only group able to succeed on 100% of these questions.

Free-Response Questions (FRQ): https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap26-frq-chinese-language.pdf

The committee of professors and teachers designed the FRQs to require students to demonstrate proficiency across four distinct modes: interpersonal writing, presentational writing, interpersonal speaking, and presentational speaking. These modalities mirror the range of real-world language demands that college students face in Chinese language courses. Since AP scores are reported on a 5-point scale, the FRQs deliberately include some very advanced and difficult points designed to differentiate AP 5s from AP 4s, points of varying difficulty levels to differentiate among AP 4s, 3s, and 2s, and foundational points to distinguish AP 1s from AP 2s.

Written Section:

FRQ 1: The Story Narration task presented students with four sequential images depicting a woman who misses a birthday party due to a traffic delay, requiring them to compose a complete narrative in written Chinese addressed to a friend. The task demands not only vocabulary range and grammatical accuracy but the compositional skill to infer cause, describe sequence, and convey emotional context across a non-Roman script. This question is the easiest of the FRQs, differentiating the AP 1s from the AP 2s, as students earning a 2 or higher needed to be able to earn most of these points.

FRQ 2: The Email Response task asked students to read an email from a friend requesting advice about the use of technology for learning Chinese and then compose a culturally appropriate written reply in Chinese. The task rewarded not just linguistic precision but also the ability to match the right tone, directly address the request for advice, and craft a well-developed response in an interpersonal written format.

Speaking Section:

FRQ 3: The Interpersonal Speaking task (Conversation) placed students in a simulated six-turn spoken exchange with a Chinese-speaking interlocutor planning a family visit, requiring spontaneous real-time responses (20 seconds per turn) on topics ranging from best travel times and local transportation to dining and gift recommendations. This is a cognitively demanding question that requires knowledge of cultural and practical vocabulary under the pressure of real-time verbal responses without preparation. Accordingly, FRQ 3 especially differentiates students who should receive an AP 3 from those who receive an AP 2: students receiving AP 3s are expected to earn the majority of these points.

FRQ 4: The Cultural Presentation task asked students to choose one traditional Chinese value and deliver a two-minute oral presentation (after four minutes of prep) explaining what the value is and why it matters. Doing this well required cultural knowledge, a clear line of argument, and the ability to sustain a coherent, developed response in spoken Chinese. This was the most challenging of the FRQs, which distinguished the AP 5s, who were expected to earn all or all but one of these points, from the AP 4s.

• AP Japanese is the first subject this year for which the scoring work is largely complete, enabling us to begin sharing key results.
• ~3,400 students took the AP Japanese Language & Culture Exam, less than 1 percent of the U.S. high school population. 55% of the AP Japanese students were heritage speakers of Japanese.
• The 2026 AP Japanese Language and Culture Exam scores: 5: 47%; 4: 10%; 3: 15%; 2: 7%; 1: 21% (Total group scores, including heritage speakers)

 Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ):

• Students performed especially well on questions related to Unit 3, Influences of Beauty and Art and Unit 1, Families in Different Societies; 65% of students earned most or all points available on such questions.
• The most challenging MCQs were related to Unit 4, How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives; 37% of students earned most or all of these available points.

Free-Response Questions (FRQ): https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap26-frq-japanese-language.pdf

The committee of professors and teachers designed these free-response questions to require students to demonstrate authentic communicative proficiency across four distinct modes — interpersonal writing, presentational writing, interpersonal speaking, and presentational speaking — mirroring the range of real-world language demands that college students face in Japanese language courses. Since AP scores are reported on a 5-point scale, the free-response questions deliberately includes some very advanced / difficult points, designed to differentiate AP 5s from AP 4s, some moderately challenging points, designed to differentiate between AP 4s, AP 3s, and AP 2s, and novice-level points, designed to differentiate AP 1s from AP 2s.

Written Section:

FRQ1: The text-chat task about artificial intelligence required six written exchanges. Students had 90 seconds per turn to move through a deliberately escalating sequence, describing AI's presence in their country, explaining its benefits, advising on its risks, and predicting its future. Students read and responded to these messages in Japanese using hiragana, katakana, and kanji in real time, reflecting the kind of digital literacy that is increasingly central to authentic Japanese communication. Students unable to produce accurate, contextually appropriate written Japanese did not succeed on this task, the most difficult on the exam. Given its difficulty, this question differentiated especially well between AP 5s and AP 4s, with 5s reserved for students able to earn all or most of the 36 points possible.

FRQ 2: The compare-and-contrast article on weather required students to produce structured, extended written Japanese of 300–400 characters or more — a task that rewards not just vocabulary breadth but grammatical precision, organizational skill, and the ability to develop an argument across multiple paragraphs in a non-Roman script language that college students typically study for years before reaching this level.

Speaking Section:

FRQ 3: The interpersonal speaking task placed students in a simulated conversation about preparing for a Japanese speech contest, requiring them not only to respond spontaneously in Japanese but to demonstrate the kind of meta-linguistic and cultural self-awareness (explaining their topic choice and presentation approach) that signals genuine proficiency. This dialogue contained points spread across a broad mix of difficulty levels, including novice, intermediate, and advanced points, enabling differentiation of student performance across the 5-point AP scale, with students earning AP 2s needing to earn at least 10 points in the dialogue – equivalent to a college D, to distinguish themselves from AP 1s.

FRQ 4: The cultural presentation. An extremely demanding task, in which students delivered a 2-minute oral presentation (after just 4 minutes of prep) presenting their own view or perspective on the role of transportation in Japanese culture, covering at least five distinct aspects or examples, with a proper introduction, supporting details, personal perspective, and a concluding remark. This FRQ was overall the highest-scoring of all of the free-response questions this year, and effectively differentiated between AP 3s and AP 2s, with students required to earn most of these points in order to receive an AP 3, while AP 5s were reserved for students who earned near-perfect and perfect scores on these presentations.

The 2026 AP Microeconomics exam was taken by 127,000 students, roughly 1% of the U.S. high school population.

Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ):

• Students continued to show strong command of Unit 1's Basic Economic Concepts; 27% of students earned all available points on these questions, making this the highest-scoring content area on the MCQ section
• Students also performed well on Big Idea: Costs, Benefits, and Marginal Analysis, a concept that recurs across nearly every unit of the course and also formed the backbone of free-response question #2.
• The most challenging MCQ content area was Production, Cost, and the Perfect Competition Model (Unit 3), a unit requiring students to hold several interrelated cost concepts simultaneously.

Free-Response Questions (FRQ):

Each AP exam has multiple versions, for different time zones. I’ll focus the commentary below on the version taken by most students: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap26-frq-microeconomics.pdf

The three FRQs collectively span the AP Microeconomics curriculum — game theory and oligopoly strategy, cost structures and competitive markets, and international trade and tariff policy — requiring students seeking a score of 3 or higher to demonstrate command of the material in the 60 minutes devoted to this section.

So: very big kudos to the students who succeeded on this exam. The quantitative load was high. Students worked through a cost table to calculate average variable cost and economic profit, applied marginal analysis, reconstructed a payoff matrix after a cost shock, and drew a correctly labeled monopoly graph — showing price, quantity, ATC, and deadweight loss — all within one exam, which the committee crafted to be a superb measure of applied economics at the college level.

I also love the way the committee anchored these questions in relevant, real-world contexts, which mirror the kinds of market and policy questions economists analyze: a steel manufacturing duopoly choosing transportation and production strategies, a helmet producer navigating short-run costs and long-run competitive adjustment, and a small open economy weighing the welfare effects of free trade and tariffs.

Since AP scores are reported on a 5-point scale, the free-response questions deliberately include some very advanced and difficult points, designed to differentiate AP 5s from AP 4s, points of varying difficulty levels to differentiate AP 4s, 3s, and 2s, and more foundational points to separate AP 2s from AP 1s.

FRQ #1, a question about Game Theory and Monopoly, required students to analyze strategic decision-making between two steel manufacturers using a payoff matrix and analyze a monopoly. In multi-part steps encompassing ten total points, students had to identify dominant strategies, determine Nash equilibria, recalculate payoffs after a cost shock, and draw a complete monopoly graph. They then had to analyze whether or not a lump-sum tax would affect the monopolist’s price. This is a good example of a free-response question that has points that spread across a range of proficiencies, so that the question contributes well to placing students within the 1-5 score scale.

For example:

• The question's tenth and final point — requiring students to correctly apply lump-sum tax reasoning — was the hardest individual point on the FRQs, a key differentiating point between AP 5s and AP 4s.
• On the other end of the spectrum, the question’s first point is much more basic, asking students to demonstrate their ability to interpret a payoff matrix accurately, a skill that must be demonstrated to earn an AP 2, but not an AP 1.

FRQ #2, a question about Short-Run Production Costs, presented students with a cost schedule for helmet production and required them to identify the market structure, calculate average variable cost and economic profit using provided data, determine the profit-maximizing quantity via marginal analysis, and reason through the long-run competitive adjustment process. This question tested whether students could execute multi-step quantitative reasoning — a hallmark of rigorous economics education — in addition to applying core conceptual frameworks about competitive markets. If a student is able to earn all 5 points on this question, they reach the standards for an AP 5. Similarly, students earning 4 of the 5 points on this question are on track for an AP 4.

FRQ #3: a question about Market Equilibrium, International Trade, and Tariff, placed students in an economic market for cucumbers requiring them to draw a correctly labeled supply-and-demand graph, analyze the effects of free trade at a world price below the domestic equilibrium price, and then evaluate the impact of a tariff on domestic producer surplus. The first point, for part A, differentiates between AP scores of 1 and 2, whereas students earning AP 5s typically answer all five parts of this question effectively.

This AP Psychology Exam was taken by over 379,000 students, 2% of the U.S. high school population, making it one of the most widely taken AP Exams. A

Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ)

• Students performed exceptionally well on questions assessing Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior and Unit 2, Cognition, with 45-50% of students earning most or all available points for these sections.
• Students also performed well on MCQs assessing Skill 2: Evaluate Research Design, with 45% earning most or all available points — an indicator that many students are internalizing AP Psychology’s emphasis on scientific literacy and critical evaluation of studies.
• The most challenging MCQ content area was Unit 4, Social Psychology and Personality, suggesting students may benefit from more focus on these topics.

Free-Response Questions (FRQ) https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap26-frq-psychology.pdf

I’ve been so impressed by the way the exam Development Committee of professors and teachers has designed these two FRQs to provide students with real-world, relevant opportunities to demonstrate scientific reasoning. Both questions place students in the role of a practicing psychological scientist: reading real peer-reviewed research, evaluating methodology, interpreting data, and constructing evidence-based arguments about human behavior.

FRQ#1, the Article Analysis Question on cell phone absence and anxiety, presented students with a study on whether not answering a ringing phone triggers anxiety. To earn all points, students needed to: identify the research method, operationally define anxiety as measured, interpret a statistically significant result, identify an ethical guideline, assess generalizability, and argue whether the evidence supports or refutes a FOMO explanation. Part C, in which students needed to describe the statistical significance, was the key differentiator for AP 5s, the most challenging part of this FRQ for students. Otherwise, to earn an AP 3, students needed to answer most parts of this question correctly, and generally scored very well on Part E, in which they explained the generalizability of the study, and Part A, in which they identified the research method.

FRQ#2, the Evidence-Based Question on retrieval and long-term memory retention, asked students to read and analyze three peer-reviewed studies examining how different learning schedules affect retrieval and retention of recently learned information. Students selected evidence from the sources and explained how each piece of evidence connected to a psychological concept, applying a different psychological concept to their second piece of evidence. Students did a terrific job forming a defensible claim (94% of AP Psychology students earned this point) and identifying supporting evidence. The challenge for some was connecting evidence to a psychological concept in Part C, which was a key differentiator between AP 4s and AP 5s. Students earning AP 5s are typically meeting all of the standards represented in this question, not missing any points.

AP Research papers were developed and submitted by ~53,000 students this year, less than 1% of the high school population.

About the AP Research scores

We hear often from Higher Education and employers about the need for students to develop and demonstrate durable skills. And when we surveyed AP students across all 40+ subject areas last year to ask whether what they learned in the AP course was relevant to their futures, AP Research received higher ratings than any other AP subject, period. (The next highest-rated for future relevance were Calculus, English Literature, Seminar, Spanish Language, and Spanish Literature.)

And this makes sense to me, given the persistence, self-management, and transferable skills students develop and demonstrate in AP Research. Over the course of the year, each student independently designs, plans, and carries out an original scholarly investigation on an academic topic, problem, issue, or idea of their own choosing—selecting their own research question, methodology, and sources. This kind of sustained, self-directed inquiry mirrors the authentic work of university researchers.

The course culminates in a 4,000–5,000-word academic paper and a 15–20-minute presentation with oral defense. (Students must defend their research question, methodology, and findings before a panel of evaluators—answering probing questions that test the depth and rigor of their scholarship.) The paper accounts for 75% of the AP score, and the presentation and defense for 25%.

The scoring rubric is designed to reward papers that go beyond summarizing existing research to make genuine contributions to knowledge: articulating a clear and defensible research question, applying a sound and replicable methodology, presenting logical reasoning supported by sufficient evidence, and demonstrating mastery of academic conventions including accurate citation.

The topics AP Research students pursue reflect genuine intellectual curiosity across virtually every discipline—from the sciences and social sciences to the humanities and the arts. Each year, the range and inventiveness of the research questions students generate impresses and sometimes astonishes the faculty who read and score these papers.

In short, AP Research students build and use a set of transferable research and writing skills—including literature review, research design, data analysis or textual analysis, argumentation, and citation—that are directly applicable in college coursework regardless of major. Students who complete AP Research demonstrate that they can identify a meaningful question, engage seriously with the scholarly literature, collect and analyze evidence, and communicate findings to an academic audience.

AP Research scores of 5: Papers earning AP 5s demonstrated original inquiry—a well-defined research question, a detailed and replicable methodology, logical reasoning that ties evidence to conclusions, and skillful use of academic conventions.

AP Research scores of 3 or higher: Papers earning at least a 3 advanced meaningfully beyond summary—they articulated a focused research purpose, engaged credibly with sources, and presented findings in appropriate academic form.

AP Research papers were developed and submitted by ~53,000 students this year, less than 1% of the high school population.

About the AP Research scores

We hear often from Higher Education and employers about the need for students to develop and demonstrate durable skills. And when we surveyed AP students across all 40+ subject areas last year to ask whether what they learned in the AP course was relevant to their futures, AP Research received higher ratings than any other AP subject, period. (The next highest-rated for future relevance were Calculus, English Literature, Seminar, Spanish Language, and Spanish Literature.)

And this makes sense to me, given the persistence, self-management, and transferable skills students develop and demonstrate in AP Research. Over the course of the year, each student independently designs, plans, and carries out an original scholarly investigation on an academic topic, problem, issue, or idea of their own choosing—selecting their own research question, methodology, and sources. This kind of sustained, self-directed inquiry mirrors the authentic work of university researchers.

The course culminates in a 4,000–5,000-word academic paper and a 15–20-minute presentation with oral defense. (Students must defend their research question, methodology, and findings before a panel of evaluators—answering probing questions that test the depth and rigor of their scholarship.) The paper accounts for 75% of the AP score, and the presentation and defense for 25%.

The scoring rubric is designed to reward papers that go beyond summarizing existing research to make genuine contributions to knowledge: articulating a clear and defensible research question, applying a sound and replicable methodology, presenting logical reasoning supported by sufficient evidence, and demonstrating mastery of academic conventions including accurate citation.

The topics AP Research students pursue reflect genuine intellectual curiosity across virtually every discipline—from the sciences and social sciences to the humanities and the arts. Each year, the range and inventiveness of the research questions students generate impresses and sometimes astonishes the faculty who read and score these papers.

In short, AP Research students build and use a set of transferable research and writing skills—including literature review, research design, data analysis or textual analysis, argumentation, and citation—that are directly applicable in college coursework regardless of major. Students who complete AP Research demonstrate that they can identify a meaningful question, engage seriously with the scholarly literature, collect and analyze evidence, and communicate findings to an academic audience.

AP Research scores of 5: Papers earning AP 5s demonstrated original inquiry—a well-defined research question, a detailed and replicable methodology, logical reasoning that ties evidence to conclusions, and skillful use of academic conventions.

AP Research scores of 3 or higher: Papers earning at least a 3 advanced meaningfully beyond summary—they articulated a focused research purpose, engaged credibly with sources, and presented findings in appropriate academic form.