Inquiring about the AP Lit curve

Hey all, I've taken my AP Lit test recently, and I'm curious about the curve. How exactly does it work?

The score you see on your AP Literature test isn't directly linked to the number of questions you got right or wrong. Instead, your raw score (based on your correct answers) is converted to a scaled score of 1-5. This is done to standardize scores across different years and versions of the test since the difficulty of the test may vary from year to year.

Here's a simplified example of how the process works. It's called 'equating'. Let's say you answered 40 out of 55 multiple-choice questions correctly and scored a 6 out of 9 on all three of your free-response questions. Your total raw score would be the number of MC questions answered correctly (40) plus the sum of points earned on the free-response section (18), giving you a total of 58 raw points.

Next, the AP College Board uses equating to convert this raw score to a score on the 1-5 scale, taking into consideration the relative difficulty of that year's exam. Each year, the scale that turns raw scores into a number from 1-5 can vary, but generally, a raw score of over 70% is usually enough to score a 5.

The exact breakdowns used to determine the scores from 1-5 are usually not released to the public, but APCollege Board does post sample ranges from previous years after scores are made available. You can check those out on the AP Students section of the College Board website.