The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the ways many teachers deliver instruction and many students learn. Since widespread disruptions began in March of 2020, the AP and higher education communities have guided the creation of options for supporting teachers and students.
We’ve made decisions that prioritize the health and safety of educators and students while preserving opportunities for motivated students to earn college credit. Rather than offering a single testing approach that would serve only some students and educators well, we are offering a variety of testing options that reflect the unique characteristics of each exam and the preferences we've heard from AP teachers, coordinators, and school leaders.
AP Digital Testing Guide
The AP Digital Testing Guide provides detailed information about 2021 digital AP Exams, including:
April 8 updates include:
Managing Student Readiness
AP coordinators can use dashboards to track students’ progress on required readiness steps for digital testing.
Preview Dashboards
Digital Exams
For many subjects, students will take digital exams on computers. If needed, the AP coordinator can authorize students to take these exams at home.
2021 AP Exam Format Information
View a consolidated summary of 2021 exam modes and differences, if any, between paper and digital exams, for all AP courses.
Planning Your Exam Administration
Schools can choose the exam administration options that work best for them—paper and pencil exams administered at school, digital exams administered at school, digital exams taken at home, or a mix—provided the school meets all requirements for each option.
See Planning Your Exam Administration for guidance on selecting exam options.
2021 AP Exams Timeline
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2021
APRIL 8
Digital Testing Application Available
The digital testing application required to take digital AP Exams this year becomes available to students and educators. School and district technology staff can begin the process of pushing the application to school-managed devices or making the application installable on school-managed devices.
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2021
MAY–JUNE
Students Complete Digital Exam Setup for each of Their Administration 2 and Administration 3 Digital Exams
Exam setup will be available three days before exam day and must be completed no later than the day before exam day. Students must complete setup for each digital exam they take, on the device they plan to use for testing.
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2021
JUNE 7
Last Day for Schools to Ship Exam Materials
This is the final deadline for schools to ship back exam materials. Schools are billed twice the fee for each exam in shipments returned after this date. This is an update to the previous deadline of June 1 for the AP Program to receive materials. This deadline has been updated due to the change in the 2021 exam schedule.
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2021
JUNE 20
Students Indicate Free Score Recipients
Students can send their scores for free to one recipient every year that they take AP Exams. They need to sign in to My AP, go to My AP Profile, select the Score Send tab, and choose the college, university, or scholarship organization that they want to receive their score report.
Instructional Resources
As the exam approaches, teachers can use free, flexible resources to help students develop their knowledge and skills and practice answering AP questions.
AP Classroom and AP Daily
Short, searchable AP Daily videos can be assigned alongside topic questions to help cover all course content and skills. Teachers can use topic questions, progress checks, and the progress dashboard and assign AP practice exams in the AP Classroom question bank.
AP Instructional Resources Built for Any Learning Environment
Whether your school is in-person, hybrid/blended, or online this year, AP teachers can use free, digital resources in AP Classroom to provide students with daily instruction, practice, and feedback on every topic and skill covered on AP Exams.