AP score distributions, 2025
What share of students earned each score on every AP exam in May 2025 — all 40 of them, from the College Board’s own published table. 6,182,171 exams, 3,243,979 students, 23,664 schools.
If you came looking for a calculator that turns raw points into a 1 to 5: no such thing exists, and the sites offering one are guessing. The College Board sets the cut scores after each administration and does not publish them. What it does publish is this, every year, and it is the figure that actually answers what a score is worth.
Parsed from the College Board's May 2025 distribution table and checked against its own totals · How we check
Every exam, by number of students
| Exam | Students | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3+ | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English Language & Comp | 616,294 | 13.4 | 28 | 32.8 | 16.1 | 9.7 | 74.3 | 3.19 |
| United States History | 516,738 | 14.2 | 36.2 | 23.3 | 18.4 | 8 | 73.7 | 3.30 |
| English Literature & Comp | 416,531 | 16.2 | 26.9 | 31 | 15.9 | 10 | 74.2 | 3.24 |
| World History: Modern | 411,547 | 13.9 | 33.4 | 17 | 26.5 | 9.2 | 64.3 | 3.16 |
| Government & Politics - U.S. | 387,973 | 23.7 | 24.8 | 23.2 | 18.4 | 9.9 | 71.7 | 3.34 |
| Psychology | 334,038 | 14.4 | 30.9 | 25.2 | 19.7 | 9.8 | 70.5 | 3.20 |
| Biology | 287,232 | 18.9 | 24.1 | 27.4 | 21 | 8.6 | 70.4 | 3.24 |
| Calculus AB | 285,891 | 20.3 | 28.9 | 15 | 22.8 | 13 | 64.2 | 3.21 |
| Human Geography | 282,781 | 17 | 25.2 | 22.5 | 25.4 | 9.9 | 64.7 | 3.14 |
| Statistics | 266,791 | 17 | 21.4 | 21.9 | 15.9 | 23.7 | 60.3 | 2.92 |
| Precalculus | 253,596 | 28.1 | 25.8 | 26.8 | 11.2 | 8 | 80.8 | 3.55 |
| Environmental Science | 245,371 | 12.6 | 27.8 | 28.8 | 15 | 15.8 | 69.2 | 3.06 |
| Spanish Language | 182,670 | 21.9 | 31.9 | 31.1 | 12.5 | 2.6 | 85 | 3.58 |
| Economics - Macro | 176,356 | 20.4 | 22.9 | 24 | 21.4 | 11.3 | 67.3 | 3.20 |
| Computer Science Principles | 175,174 | 10.7 | 19.9 | 31.2 | 21.4 | 16.8 | 61.9 | 2.87 |
| Physics 1: Algebra-Based | 174,401 | 19.8 | 24.7 | 22.9 | 13.4 | 19.2 | 67.3 | 3.12 |
| Chemistry | 168,833 | 17.9 | 28.6 | 31.4 | 15.9 | 6.2 | 77.9 | 3.36 |
| Calculus BC | 160,436 | 44 | 21.9 | 12.8 | 15.2 | 6.2 | 78.6 | 3.82 |
| Seminar | 126,001 | 9.4 | 18.9 | 55 | 12.5 | 4.2 | 83.4 | 3.17 |
| Economics - Micro | 117,548 | 21.6 | 24 | 22.6 | 20.3 | 11.5 | 68.2 | 3.24 |
| Computer Science A | 93,217 | 25.6 | 21.8 | 19.8 | 10.9 | 22 | 67.2 | 3.18 |
| European History | 86,729 | 14 | 34.8 | 23.9 | 19 | 8.4 | 72.6 | 3.27 |
| Physics C - Mechanics | 65,980 | 21.7 | 24 | 27.5 | 16 | 10.8 | 73.2 | 3.30 |
| 2-D Art and Design | 48,279 | 11.9 | 29.3 | 41.8 | 13.7 | 3.3 | 83 | 3.33 |
| Research | 43,214 | 14.8 | 28.1 | 45.6 | 9.3 | 2.2 | 88.5 | 3.44 |
| Physics C - Electricity & Magnetism | 29,708 | 25.2 | 23.7 | 24.1 | 17.8 | 9.2 | 72.9 | 3.38 |
| Spanish Literature & Culture | 27,266 | 9.1 | 23.6 | 37.7 | 20.8 | 8.8 | 70.3 | 3.03 |
| Government & Politics - Comparative | 27,150 | 16.3 | 23.3 | 32.2 | 16.5 | 11.7 | 71.8 | 3.16 |
| Art History | 25,584 | 16 | 23.3 | 26.2 | 24.1 | 10.3 | 65.6 | 3.11 |
| Physics 2: Algebra-Based | 24,211 | 21.8 | 28.8 | 22 | 20.2 | 7.2 | 72.6 | 3.38 |
| Drawing - Art & Design | 23,107 | 17.1 | 31.5 | 35.6 | 12.6 | 3.2 | 84.2 | 3.47 |
| African American Studies | 21,435 | 17.3 | 32.5 | 29.3 | 15.9 | 4.9 | 79.2 | 3.41 |
| French Language | 19,639 | 14 | 25 | 34.5 | 20.2 | 6.3 | 73.5 | 3.20 |
| Chinese Language | 18,312 | 54.9 | 18.2 | 16.1 | 4.6 | 6.2 | 89.2 | 4.11 |
| Music - Theory | 17,799 | 18.8 | 18 | 23.7 | 24.7 | 14.7 | 60.5 | 3.01 |
| 3-D Art and Design | 10,304 | 6.7 | 24.9 | 39.9 | 24.5 | 3.9 | 71.6 | 3.06 |
| Latin | 4,336 | 12.5 | 16.7 | 29.4 | 25.2 | 16.2 | 58.6 | 2.84 |
| German Language | 4,213 | 21.3 | 24.5 | 25.7 | 17.6 | 10.8 | 71.5 | 3.28 |
| Japanese Language | 3,245 | 43.3 | 11.3 | 20.2 | 7.5 | 17.8 | 74.7 | 3.55 |
| Italian Language | 2,241 | 24.6 | 24.8 | 25.9 | 17 | 7.8 | 75.2 | 3.41 |
Percentages are of students taking that exam. The 3+ column is the College Board’s own figure and equals the three columns to its left; where it looks a tenth off, that is rounding in the source, not here.
Highest and lowest share of 5s
Most 5s
- Chinese Language54.9%
- Calculus BC44%
- Japanese Language43.3%
- Precalculus28.1%
- Computer Science A25.6%
- Physics C - Electricity & Magnetism25.2%
- Italian Language24.6%
- Government & Politics - U.S.23.7%
Fewest 5s
- 3-D Art and Design6.7%
- Spanish Literature & Culture9.1%
- Seminar9.4%
- Computer Science Principles10.7%
- 2-D Art and Design11.9%
- Latin12.5%
- Environmental Science12.6%
- English Language & Comp13.4%
Read this column with care. The exams at the top of the left list are language exams sat largely by heritage speakers, and Chinese Language’s 54.9% rate of 5s says who took it rather than how hard it was. Restricting to the 20 exams with more than 100,000 candidates narrows the range from 6.7–54.9% to 9.4–44.0%, and that is the comparison worth making.
What each score means
| Score | College Board term | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Extremely well qualified | Equivalent to an A in the college course. Credit at essentially every institution that grants any. |
| 4 | Very well qualified | Equivalent to an A-, B+ or B. Credit at most institutions. |
| 3 | Qualified | Equivalent to a B-, C+ or C. The College Board calls this qualified; many selective universities do not grant credit for it. |
| 2 | Possibly qualified | No credit anywhere. Reportable, but not usable. |
| 1 | No recommendation | No credit. Scores of 1 and 2 can be withheld from a college report. |
Questions people actually ask
- Can an AP score calculator tell me what I got?
- No, and every one that claims to is guessing. The College Board sets cut scores after each administration, against that year’s exam and that year’s cohort, and does not publish them. Calculators use the boundaries from a released exam — for several subjects that means 2012 or earlier — and the boundaries move by several raw points between years. The distribution below is the part that is published.
- What is a good AP score?
- 3 is what the College Board calls qualified and is the usual threshold for credit. 4 and 5 are what selective universities want, and many of them grant credit only for a 5. Across all 6,182,171 exams taken in 2025, 71.4% scored 3 or higher.
- Which AP exam is easiest?
- By share of 5s, the language exams — but that is misleading, because those cohorts are largely heritage speakers. Among exams with more than 100,000 candidates the highest is Calculus BC, where 44.0% score a 5 on 160,436 students, and that is self-selection too: BC is taken by students who have already finished a year of calculus. Precalculus, at 28.1% on 253,596, is the least selective exam near the top of the list.
- Which AP exam is hardest?
- By pass rate, Statistics: 60.3% score 3 or higher on 266,791 students, the lowest of any exam at that scale, and 23.7% score a 1 — more than any other large exam. Computer Science Principles is next at 61.9%. Physics 1 is close behind on 1s, at 19.2%. A low rate on a large, unselected cohort says more about difficulty than a low rate on a small self-selected one.
- Do colleges see a 1 or a 2?
- Only if you send it. AP scores are reported by student request, and you can withhold or cancel individual scores. A 2 does not earn credit anywhere, so there is rarely a reason to send one.
- How is the raw score turned into a 1 to 5?
- Through a standard-setting process after the exam. College faculty who teach the equivalent course review student work at each boundary and judge where the cut belongs, and the results are equated against previous years so that a 4 means the same thing across administrations. That equating step is exactly why last year’s cut scores do not apply to this year’s exam.
- What does the mean score tell me?
- The average of every score awarded on that exam, from 1 to 5. It moves with the cohort more than with the paper: an exam mostly taken by seniors who chose it will average higher than one required of a whole cohort, at the same level of difficulty.
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