AP Exams
AP US History practice and prep course
Nine historical periods, from 1491 to the present, with short-answer, document-based, and long-essay practice. Start with 13 free questions. The full course adds the lessons, the study guide, and practice tests.
Course outline
- What the AP U.S. History Exam Actually Asks You to DoThe four exam tasks, their timing and weight, what changed in the digital redesign, and why dates control which evidence counts.13 questions
- Why Good History Answers Still Lose PointsDates, prompt parts, and the ten recurring errors that cost points even when the history is accurate.11 questions
- A Continent Already Full of NationsNorth America in 1491: how geography shaped different Native societies, how surplus and trade built larger political systems, and how to read European sources.10 questions
- How 1492 Remade the Atlantic WorldThe Columbian Exchange, epidemics, why conquest was not a one-cause story, Spanish and French/Dutch systems, Native agency, and the expansion of Atlantic slavery.11 questions
- Unit 1 Review: The World Europeans Entered, 1491–1607Unit 1 review: key dates, the facts that explain how power shifted after 1492, 15 practice questions, and a source-based SAQ.16 questions
- Why England's Colonies Grew So DifferentlyHow the Chesapeake, New England, Middle, and Lower South colonies developed different economies, settlement patterns, and societies inside one empire.10 questions
- How Plantation Labor Became Racial SlaveryHow tobacco, indentured servitude, the headright system, hereditary slave law, and Atlantic trade moved Virginia from mixed bound labor toward racial slavery.10 questions
- How Colonists Learned to Govern Inside an EmpireLocal self-government, Native diplomacy and resistance, the Great Awakening, the Enlightenment, and salutary neglect before the imperial crisis of the 1760s.10 questions
- Unit 2 Review: Why British North America Split Into Distinct Regions, 1607–1754Unit 2 review: key dates, the facts that explain regional difference in British America, 20 practice questions, and a source-based SAQ on Bacon's Rebellion.21 questions
- Why Britain's Victory in 1763 Created a Colonial CrisisFrom the Seven Years' War to the First Continental Congress: how debt, western policy, taxation, and punishment turned colonial protest into intercolonial resistance.14 questions
- How Protest Became a War for IndependenceCommon Sense, the Declaration, republican fears, Saratoga and the French alliance, and the separate choices of Black Americans, Native nations, and Loyalists.10 questions
- How Far Did the Revolution Actually Change American Society?Northern gradual emancipation, republican motherhood, and growing pressure on Native land show a Revolution that changed political language faster than social power.10 questions
- How the Constitution Created a New Political FightThe Articles' strengths and limits, the Constitution's compromises, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Hamilton versus Jefferson, and the rise of the first party system.11 questions
- How an Imperial Crisis Produced a New Republic, 1754–1800Unit 3 review: key dates, the facts that explain the new federal system, 25 practice questions, a secondary-source SAQ, and an LEQ on conflicts over political authority.27 questions
- What Jeffersonian Government Looked Like in PracticeLouisiana, the Embargo, the War of 1812, Marbury, McCulloch, the Missouri Compromise, and the Monroe Doctrine test how leaders used federal power against their own principles.13 questions
- How the Market Revolution Rewired Daily LifeCheaper transportation tied farms, factories, and banks to distant markets and prices, deepening regional specialization and spreading both opportunity and financial panic.10 questions
- Who Gained Power in the Age of Jackson?White male suffrage, mass parties, the Bank War, nullification, and Indian removal: why Jackson's use of power depended on the issue.10 questions
- Why Reform Exploded Before the Civil WarRevival religion, voluntary associations, abolitionism, enslaved resistance, and women's organizing, from the Second Great Awakening to Seneca Falls.12 questions
- What Changed in American Life Before 1848?Unit 4 review: key dates, the facts that explain the Market Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, and reform, and 12 practice questions on 1800–1848.12 questions
- Why New Western Land Made Slavery Harder to CompromiseManifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the Wilmot Proviso, Free Soil, popular sovereignty, and the Compromise of 1850: each step moved the slavery fight without ending it.10 questions
- How the 1850s Destroyed the Old Political SettlementKansas-Nebraska, Bleeding Kansas, the Republican rise, Dred Scott, Harpers Ferry, and the election of 1860 as connected stages of sectional breakdown.10 questions
- How the Union Turned a War for Union Into a War Against SlaveryUnion resources, contraband policy, the Emancipation Proclamation, Black soldiers, the home front, and the wartime Republican economic program.10 questions
- How Reconstruction Rewrote Citizenship Before Federal Protection CollapsedPresidential and Radical Reconstruction, the 13th-15th Amendments, Black political power, sharecropping, court limits, violence, and the end of federal enforcement in 1877.12 questions
- How Expansion Broke the Union, 1844–1877Unit 5 review: key dates, the facts that explain sectional crisis, war, emancipation, and Reconstruction, and 12 practice questions on 1844–1877.12 questions
- How Federal Expansion Remade the WestRailroads, land grants, and the Plains wars show how federal policy and private capital remade the West at the expense of Native sovereignty.10 questions
- Why Industrial Growth Produced a New Labor StruggleCorporate consolidation, new technology, and concentrated wealth set off a labor struggle in which workers organized and government usually sided with employers.10 questions
- How Migration Reshaped Gilded Age AmericaImmigration, urban growth, machine politics, nativism, and the New South's racial order reshaped the Gilded Age United States.10 questions
- Why Farmers Turned Economic Pain Into PoliticsFalling prices, debt, and the money question pushed farmers from the Grange to the Populists, shaping the 1896 election and early federal regulation.10 questions
- Who Held Power in the Gilded Age, 1865–1898?Unit 6 review: key dates, the facts that explain power in the Gilded Age, 12 practice questions, and LEQ and DBQ planning for 1865–1910.15 questions
- How National Power Expanded at the Turn of the CenturyOverseas expansion after 1898 and the Progressive Era both expanded national power, but their reach and fairness were uneven and contested.10 questions
- How World War I Changed the Reach of American PowerFrom neutrality to mobilization, repression of dissent, the Great Migration, and the failed peace, World War I expanded federal power at home and abroad.10 questions
- What Made the 1920s Feel Like a New America?Mass production, mass media, and consumer credit transformed the 1920s, while immigration restriction, the Klan, and culture wars exposed deep conflicts.11 questions
- Why the Great Depression Changed What Americans Expected From WashingtonThe Depression's causes, Hoover's limited response, and the New Deal's lasting but uneven expansion of federal responsibility.11 questions
- How World War II Created the Postwar United StatesFrom Lend-Lease to Hiroshima: mobilization, civil liberties and civil rights, the GI Bill, and the postwar order.10 questions
- How Crisis Enlarged the Federal Government, 1890–1945Unit 7 review: key dates, the facts that explain the new federal role from 1898 to 1945, and 15 practice questions.15 questions
- How containment became a global commitmentTrace containment from Kennan's selective strategy through the Truman Doctrine, NATO, NSC-68, Korea, and the decolonizing world, and see why the policy had limits.14 questions
- Why the 1950s were more uneasy than they lookedExplain the postwar boom, suburbanization, the uneven GI Bill, mass consumption, and the Second Red Scare, and see how prosperity and fear existed side by side.10 questions
- Why civil rights victory took decades of local organizingRebuild the civil rights movement from the NAACP's legal strategy and the Montgomery boycott to sit-ins, Birmingham, Selma, and the 1964 and 1965 laws, and see why 1965 was not the end.11 questions
- How the 1960s broke the postwar consensusConnect the Great Society, Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, 1968, and the new rights movements to explain how the decade's early optimism gave way to distrust and division.10 questions
- Why the 1970s changed what Americans expected from governmentFollow Nixon, Watergate, stagflation, the energy crisis, détente, Carter, and the cultural backlash to see how a conservative coalition took shape before 1980.11 questions
- Unit 8 review: How the Cold War reached into American lifeReview the four stories of 1945 to 1980: containment, uneven prosperity, the freedom struggle, and the loss of confidence that helped a conservative coalition grow.5 questions
- How the Reagan era reshaped policy before the Cold War endedSeparate Reagan's domestic and foreign-policy impact from the many causes of Soviet collapse: supply-side policy, PATCO, deindustrialization, Iran-Contra, Gorbachev, and 1989 to 1991.11 questions
- Why the end of the Cold War did not simplify American lifeMap the post-Cold War United States: the Gulf War, NATO and the Balkans, September 11, NAFTA, immigration, welfare reform, the 2008 crisis, health and climate policy, and continued global engagement.11 questions
- Unit 9 review: What the conservative turn changed after 1980Review three changes and three continuities from 1980 to the present, with a key-dates sequence, a Reagan continuity-and-change table, and SAQ practice on globalization.1 questions
- Earn each SAQ point with economical writingHow the three SAQs work, what each task verb requires, how to read each source type, and the four errors that cost points even when the facts are right.16 questions
- Make seven documents prove one argumentThe seven DBQ points, how to sort documents by the job they do, how to build a thesis that can carry them, and what real sourcing and complexity look like.11 questions
- Turn a broad LEQ into a focused argumentThe six LEQ points, how to narrow a broad prompt, sort evidence before drafting, make each paragraph prove something, and earn complexity with substance.11 questions
- Think historically before you writeComparison, causation, and continuity and change as ways of thinking, with worked drills on shared dimensions, triggers versus conditions, time spans, and combined arguments.14 questions
- Retrieve the whole course without notesA final-review plan: rebuild the nine-period chronology from memory, trace the eight themes and six evidence strands, and diagnose your own error patterns.5 questions
- Manage the digital exam in real timeBluebook basics, the time budget for each section, the test-day checklist, and habits for reading, typing, and recovering when a section goes wrong.5 questions
- Practice Exam 1: Multiple-Choice SectionTake the 55-question, 55-minute multiple-choice section of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 1, then review the answer key and explanations.55 questions
- Practice Exam 1: Short-Answer, DBQ and Long EssayComplete the three short-answer questions, the document-based question, and the long essay of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 1, then score yourself with model answers.5 questions
- Practice Exam 2: Multiple-Choice SectionTake the 55-question, 55-minute multiple-choice section of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 2, then review the answer key and explanations.55 questions
- Practice Exam 2: Short-Answer, DBQ and Long EssayComplete the three short-answer questions, the document-based question, and the long essay of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 2, then score yourself with model answers.5 questions
- Practice Exam 3: Multiple-Choice SectionTake the 55-question, 55-minute multiple-choice section of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 3, then review the answer key and explanations.55 questions
- Practice Exam 3: Short-Answer, DBQ and Long EssayComplete the three short-answer questions, the document-based question, and the long essay of AP U.S. History Practice Exam 3, then score yourself with model answers.5 questions