The AP® Macroeconomics exam is one of the most commonly-taken AP® exams in the United States, mainly due to the fact that macroeconomics is a required part of a high school student’s curriculum. Your decision to take the exam will surely come from a desire to acquire college credit, but colleges are strict when it comes to giving it out. Therefore, you need to study hard and recognize the structure of the exam to get the best possible score you can make: a 5.

The AP® Macroeconomics exam is split into two sections. The first is AP® Macroeconomics multiple-choice, which covers a vast array of topics that you will have studied in class. The second section is the FRQ, which has less of a broad scope, but goes more in depth. The FRQ is usually considered the more difficult section; however, the multiple choice section takes up a greater portion of your final grade on the test. The following is an overall review of the multiple-choice section of the exam and how you will approach them in your studies.

What is the Format of the AP® Macroeconomics Exam?

As previously stated, the exam is split into two sections that cover the topics you have learned in class. The content of the sections depends on the CollegeBoard’s specific requirements for topics that should be covered in class. These topics are allotted a certain percentage of the total content of the exam.

The AP® Macroeconomics multiple-choice section is 60 questions long and you will have 70 minutes to complete the section. The content of the multiple-choice section is dependent on the percentages allotted to each topic relevant to macroeconomics, as previously stated. However, the percent for each topic is variable and the content is always changing. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with as many topics as possible to get a good score on the exam.

The free-response section, or FRQ, is the essay portion of the exam that you will answer to your best knowledge. The content of this portion can be taken from any of the covered topics, regardless of their percentage on the multiple choice section.

Why is the AP® Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Section Important?

Today, public and private schools around the country are setting higher standards for AP® scores than in the past. As an example, the University of California website requires that a student gets a 4 on AP® Macroeconomics in order to receive credit. That is an almost perfect score. Considering that the multiple choice exam counts for the majority of your score, you need to do well on the it to get the credit you need in college.

The CollegeBoard does not often release its scoring methods, but the methods from the 2005 AP® test seem to confirm what we have stated above. Students who answered 53-60 of the questions correctly on the exam had a 98% chance of getting a 5 on the exam. The next tier, 45-52 correct answers, dropped their chances of getting a 5 significantly, down to 37%, and only gave them a 62% chance of receiving a 4 on the exam as well. To sum up, you have to get at least 36-44 questions correct in order to receive a minimum score of a 4, and even then you only have a 68% chance of doing so.

The conclusion you should draw from these statistics is that you need to score high on the multiple-choice section and get at least 60% of the questions correct in order to qualify for a 4. That is not counting the score you get on the FRQ question. Therefore, in order to compensate for a poor FRQ, which is worth 30% of your total score, you should get at least between 70% and 80% of all questions correct on the multiple choice section. That means you have to know the smartest, most efficient methods of answering the questions.

What Content is Covered on the AP® Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Section?

This is where things get tricky and it gets tough to study for the exam. Your school’s AP® Macroeconomics curriculum, and therefore your teacher’s AP® Macroeconomics class, should have followed the guidelines set out by the CollegeBoard. The CollegeBoard has a strict set of percentages of each topic that should be covered in class. These percentages are reflected on the exam by the percent of each topic in the multiple choice section.

The following is a breakdown of these percentages:

1. 1. Basic Economic Concepts: 8-12%
   2. Measurement of Economic Performance: 12-16%
   3. National Income and Price Determination: 10-15%
   4. Financial Sector: 15-20%
   5. Inflation, Unemployment, and Stabilization Policies: 20-30%
   6. Economic Growth and Productivity: 5-10%
   7. Open Economy: International Trade and Finance: 10-15%

The exact content of these sections is covered in depth on this Albert.io blog post. You should note that you should not structure your AP® Macroeconomics study plan solely according to this percentage breakdown because there is a relationship between the topics. The financial sector, which is worth 15-20% of the exam, will have a role in the last three topics as well, for example.

How to Prepare for AP® Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Questions?

Now that you’ve got an idea behind the content of the exam itself, you should know how to prepare for the questions. In following the previously-mentioned blog post, which also highlights a study strategy, you should take note of the fact that you have 60 minutes to answer 70 questions on the exam. That means you will have less than a minute for each question — 45 seconds, to be exact.

If you are aiming to get at least 70-80% of all the questions correct on the multiple-choice section, you need to be precise with the questions you answer and your strategy overall. While time is of the essence on the exam, you should know what you can and cannot answer by the time you are seated thanks to your AP® Macroeconomics review.

How to Answer AP® Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Questions?

As discussed, you need to be able to get almost all questions correct and possess a general knowledge of the whole subject in order to do so. That being said, there is some strategy to answering the questions themselves. Consider the following question as an example.

1. What is comparative advantage?

A. The relationship between supply and demand.

B. The theory that two countries mutually benefit from cooperation through specialization.

C. The decision for a country to specialize production in one good when it outweighs the opportunity cost of producing two goods.

D. The driving force behind globalization.

From your studies, you should know that the answer to the question would have to be B. However, let’s assume that you do not know the answer.

The AP® Macroeconomics multiple-choice questions are set up to be tricky, and you will notice that B, C, and D would all appear to be correct answers, as they all deal with comparative advantage. In fact, A is the only completely wrong answer. However, B is the most correct answer for the question, since it is nearly a word-for-word definition of comparative advantage, while the other answers are results arising from comparative advantage. You should be careful to read all of the answers before choosing one in order to make sure you have the most correct answer.

In addition, if you are unsure, you should always go for the most specific and most simple answer. Looking at the example question, c contains several terms and is quite long and nonspecific. Likewise, d is a very general answer as globalization is something that is affected by many underlying forces. Therefore, b is the most obvious answer because it is a simple explanation that is specific to the topic.

These tips will help you answer your questions quickly and go for the most correct answer if you are unsure of which choice you should pick.

What are AP® Macroeconomics Multiple Choice Questions Like?

In order to give you some insight into what the questions are like, the following are some questions from the 2012 CollegeBoard Practice Exam.

4. Unlike a market economy, a command economy uses

A. more centralized planning in economic decision making.

B. consumer sovereignty to make production decisions.

C. its resources more efficiently.

D. price signals in economic decision making.

E. the popular vote in making resource allocation decisions.

The answer to this question is A because, in a command economy, the government dictates economic policy, which results in centralized planning. This question was chosen to show you how a basic economics question is set up and how the answers are written. While A is correct, all of the other answers are related to other types of economies and therefore appear to be a correct answer. However, the first answer is the only one that is related to a command economy.

22. Which of the following are the most likely short-run effects of an increase in government expenditures?

This question was chosen to show you a different format that is used on the exam. You have to look at a cause-effect relationship from a certain concept in economics, in this case a government’s economic policy. The correct answer would be C because it is part of expansionary policy, which aims to increase production (i.e. the country’s GDP) by spending more on government projects to reduce unemployment. The increase in spending increases inflation as well, since the government is creating more money and reducing the value of its currency (and, in effect, increasing the price of good).

You should always take note of inverse and direct relationships in order to answer these questions correctly.

51. The shifting of a country’s production possibilities curve to the right will most likely cause

A. net exports to decline

B. inflation to increase

C. the aggregate demand curve to shift to the left

D. the long-run aggregate supply curve to shift to the left

E. the long-run aggregate supply curve to shift to the right

This final question was chosen as it shows why you might need to use your scratch paper. If you come upon a question that is best explained by drawing a graph, then you should take a few seconds to visualize in order to get the correct answer. In this case, the answer is E, because an increase in production would lead to an increase in long-run supply. For more help and further explanations on questions related to the AP® Macroeconomics multiple-choice section, you can look at the Albert.io questions section in order to review economic concepts and explanations of results.

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