Practice to Mastery

Practice to Mastery: AP® United States History Practice Exams gives you twelve full-length practice exams built to the format of the AP® United States History Exam, each followed by a complete answer key, an explanation for every multiple-choice question, and point-by-point scoring guides with model essays. Together the exams hold 720 original questions: 660 multiple-choice, 36 short-answer, 12 document-based, and 12 long essay questions.

The real exam tests more than content. It tests whether you can read a source under time pressure, connect it to its era, and build a written argument from evidence in a single sitting. The only way to get good at that is to do it, under real conditions, more than once. This book gives you twelve chances.

BUILT TO THE REAL FORMAT

Every exam follows the current structure and timing:

- Section I, Part A: 55 multiple-choice questions in 55 minutes, in sets of three or four built on a shared source.

- Section I, Part B: three required short-answer questions in 40 minutes, on two secondary sources, one primary source, and one non-text source.

- Section II: one seven-document DBQ (60 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period) and one long essay question (40 minutes).

Each exam samples all nine periods of the course in proportions close to the exam's published weights, and no exam prints difficulty tags, because the real exam prints none.

REAL SOURCES, ORIGINAL QUESTIONS

Primary sources are real public-domain documents, including laws, speeches, letters, court opinions, treaties, platforms, and government reports, quoted word for word and checked against reliable printings, each with a full source line. Charts, maps, and tables are drawn for this book from published data such as the census and official election returns. Interpretations labeled Historian A and Historian B are written for this book.

TWELVE DIFFERENT ESSAY THEMES

Each exam's DBQ and long essay address a different theme, from the Revolutionary War, the market revolution, and the antislavery movement to the Great Migration, Cold War foreign policy, and immigration policy, so across the book you practice every reasoning process: causation, comparison, and continuity and change.

ANSWERS THAT TEACH

Every multiple-choice explanation shows why the best answer is right, tying the source to the history behind it, rather than simply naming a letter. A questions-by-period table in each answer key shows where your misses cluster. Scoring guides follow the published point structures, and model essays come with commentary on how each point is earned. A score-estimate table after every exam weights the four parts as the real exam does.

HOW TO USE IT

Take each exam in one timed sitting, score it honestly, then study it: read every explanation you need, log your errors, and compare your essays with the models. The front matter suggests schedules for a semester, for the final weeks, and for section-by-section practice.

THE PRACTICE TO MASTERY SERIES

This book is the companion to Practice to Mastery: AP® United States History Workbook, which practices the course period by period. No question or document is repeated between the two books.

AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.