The College Board removed decades of past AP Free-Response Questions from its official website this summer, leaving students with only the last three years of exams to study from.
Additional practice tests and questions are now restricted to the AP Classroom website and can only be released by teachers. According to The College Board, the change was based on teacher feedback.
“We received feedback from AP teachers that making several decades of old exam materials available on AP Central limits their usefulness in class—especially when students can find and share answers online,” The College Board said in an official statement on AP Central. “This update ensures that AP teachers retain the flexibility to use these valuable resources as intended—to build skills, assess progress and prepare students with integrity.”
The College Board has always limited the amount of test information it posts publicly online, creating and administering multiple versions of FRQs for AP tests but only publishing some of those. The College Board similarly does not release multiple choice questions to protect exam security and classroom integrity.
As a result, teachers have raised concerns that these precautions limit not just students but also educators developing their AP curriculum.
“We have no idea if what we’re teaching actually prepares kids for the multiple choice tests in any way. We haven’t seen it in years,” AP U.S. History teacher Anysia Leveratt said. “And now with them also not showing us the FRQs, it’s just kind of allowing us to not be able to support our kids in the most up-to-date way.”
To make up for the loss of public access to these FRQs, many Northwood AP courses provide resources on AP Classroom, including multiple-choice questions and FRQ practice, for students to use. A few classes, such as AP Biology, also keep paper copies of old FRQs, which will be used as review material during class.
Students who are self-studying can also reference The College Board’s YouTube channel and AP Daily videos, which cover multiple choice questions, old FRQ prompts and scoring rubrics, for preparation.
“In class, we always looked over FRQs for basically our own reference and to see what would be good for us to use. It kind of gives the standard for what we should be aiming for in terms of our answers,” said senior Zayd Kisonak, who has taken several AP classes at Northwood. “If you are self-studying, you are at the shorter end of the stick but AP tests are always being updated and it doesn’t make sense to look at outdated things, so I understand if that’s what [The College Board’s] going for.”
For more information and AP exam practice, visit https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap-exams-what-to-know/practice-for-exams.
