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Advanced Placement (AP)English Literature and Composition (also known asSenior AP English,AP Lit,APENG, orAP English IV) is a course and examination offered by theCollege Board[1] as part of theAdvanced Placement Program in the United States.
Designated for motivated students with a command of standardEnglish, an interest in exploring and analyzing challenging classical and contemporaryliterature, and a desire to analyze and interpret dominantliterarygenres andthemes, it is often offered to high school seniors and the other AP English course, AP English Language and Composition, to juniors. The College Board does not restrict courses by grade. Students learn and apply methods of literary analysis and write with a variety of purposes to increase precision in expression. Students in AP English Literature and Composition typically sit for the national AP examination administered each May for the College Board by the Educational Testing Service. The College Board publishes changing information about all AP courses and examinations on its web site.
On one of the three essays students write as part of the examination, students choose a work of literature they will write about. Readers of the exam who get an essay on a work they have not read typically pass the essay to a reader who has. The scoring guides that readers use to rate the essays are developed by experienced readers on site just before the reading begins each June, using some of the actual exam essays. Since those scoring guides do not exist before the Reading, instructors cannot teach to them but focus instead on encouraging text-based analysis.
The College Board publishes a recommended reading list, while emphasizing that it "does not mandate any particular authors or reading list." The reading list contains four major categories:
All categories also incorporate works from traditionally under-represented writers, especially from racial minorities.
In the 2023 administration, 356,043 students took the exam, with a mean score of 3.26.[2]
The grade distributions since 2008 were:
| Score | 2008 | 2009[3] | 2010[4] | 2011[5] | 2012[6] | 2013[7] | 2014[8] | 2015[9] | 2016[10] | 2017[11] | 2018[12] | 2019[13] | 2020[14] | 2021[15] | 2022[16] | 2023[2] | 2024[17] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 6.5% | 7.4% | 8.1% | 8.4% | 8.3% | 7.6% | 7.7% | 7.6% | 7.4% | 6.8% | 5.6% | 6.2% | 9.3% | 4.9% | 16.9% | 14.9% | 13% |
| 4 | 19.9% | 20.5% | 19.1% | 17.8% | 18.0% | 18.8% | 17.8% | 18.2% | 17.8% | 16.1% | 14.5% | 15.7% | 17.3% | 12.0% | 27.3% | 27.8% | 27% |
| 3 | 33.9% | 30.8% | 30.2% | 31.0% | 30.4% | 31.5% | 29.6% | 30.5% | 29.4% | 29.7% | 27.2% | 27.8% | 33.5% | 26.9% | 33.7% | 34.5% | 32% |
| 2 | 30.6% | 31.3% | 32.6% | 32.1% | 32.3% | 31.7% | 33.0% | 32.7% | 33.4% | 33.9% | 36.0% | 34.3% | 27.8% | 37.3% | 14.1% | 14.4% | 17% |
| 1 | 9.1% | 10.1% | 10.0% | 10.7% | 11.1% | 10.5% | 11.9% | 11.1% | 12.0% | 13.5% | 16.7% | 16.0% | 12.2% | 18.8% | 7.9% | 8.4% | 11% |
| % of Scores 3 or Higher | 60.3% | 58.6% | 57.4% | 57.2% | 56.6% | 57.9% | 55.0% | 56.2% | 54.6% | 52.6% | 47.3% | 49.7% | 60.1% | 43.9% | 77.9% | 77.2% | 72% |
| Mean | 2.84 | 2.84 | 2.83 | 2.81 | 2.80 | 2.81 | 2.76 | 2.78 | 2.75 | 2.69 | 2.57 | 2.62 | 2.84 | 2.47 | 3.31 | 3.26 | 3.14 |
| Standard Deviation | 1.05 | 1.09 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.11 | 1.09 | 1.11 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.10 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.13 | 1.08 | 1.15 | 1.13 | 1.17 |
| Number of Students | 320,358 | 332,352 | 353,781 | 367,962 | 380,608 | 385,576 | 397,477 | 401,076 | 405,446 | 404,137 | 404,014 | 380,136 | 333,980 | 321,029 | 339,401 | 356,043 |
