Exam guide
The AP® Computer Science Principles exam
When it is, how it's set up, what's on it, how students have scored, and a straight answer on how hard it is.
Your exam:
Checked against College Board's website in October 2026.
When is the 2027 exam?
- Date
- , session 1 (usually morning). Your AP coordinator sets the exact start time.
- Length
- 3 hours
- How you take it
- Fully digital: you answer everything in the Bluebook testing app.
- Calculator
- No calculator.
- Reference sheet
- The exam reference sheet, which explains the pseudocode the questions use.
See every exam on one page in the 2027 exam calendar.
No format changes for the May 2027 exam
College Board hasn't announced changes to the Computer Science Principles exam for 2027. Every course's changes
See College Board's list (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) row, Most Recent Change column)
How the exam is set up
| Section | Questions | Time | Share of score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multiple choice57 questions with one answer, 5 more about a reading passage on a computing innovation, and 8 where you select two answers. Each question has 4 answer choices. | 70 questions | 2 hours | 70% |
| Create performance task | A program you build in class, with a short video | At least 9 hours in class, submitted by April 30, 2027 | 30%, together with the written response |
| Written responseQuestions about the code in your own Create task, using your Personalized Project Reference. | 2 questions with 4 parts | 1 hour | Part of the 30% |
What's on the exam
College Board says roughly how much of the exam comes from each unit. The biggest is Unit 3, Algorithms and Programming (30–35%).
How it's scored
Multiple choice is scored by computer, and a wrong answer costs you nothing, so answer every question. The free-response answers are scored in June by AP teachers and college professors, using a rubric.
Each section's points are weighted by its share of the score, added up, and turned into a score from 1 to 5. College Board doesn't publish exactly how many points each score needs, and the cutoffs can change a little from year to year.
Want a rough idea of where you stand? Try the Computer Science Principles score calculator with your practice test results. For the 1 to 5 scale and college credit, see how AP scores work.
How students scored in 2026
- Score of 5
- 10%
- Score of 4
- 23%
- Score of 3
- 30%
- Score of 2
- 21%
- Score of 1
- 16%
Scores of 3 or higher (63% of students) have green bars; 2s and 1s have gray ones. A 3 is where many colleges start to give credit.
In 2026, 63% of students scored 3 or higher, and 10% got a 5. The most common score was a 3.
In 2025, 175,174 students took the exam. 61.9% scored 3 or higher, 10.7% got a 5, and the average score was 2.87. College Board hasn't published the 2026 number of students or average score yet.
Source: College Board's AP Computer Science Principles score distributions. Percentages are College Board's, rounded, so they may not add to exactly 100. Compare every course.
Is AP® Computer Science Principles hard?
Judging by pass rates alone, Computer Science Principles is one of the harder exams to pass. In 2026, 63% of students scored 3 or higher: the 2nd lowest pass rate of the 27 exams on this site. 10% got a 5, the lowest share of 5s.
Computer Science Principles covers a broad range: programming, data, the internet and how computing affects society.
30% of your score comes from the Create task, a program you build in class, and the written questions about it on exam day.
The multiple choice is long: 70 questions in 2 hours, including some where you pick two answers.
Pass rates show how students did, not exactly how hard the material is. They also depend on who takes each exam and how much they prepared. See every course's pass rate.
Get ready on this site
- Practice examA full, timed multiple choice section: 70 questions, weighted by unit like the real one.
- Score calculatorPut in your practice results to see roughly what score they'd earn.
- Practice by unitExam-style multiple choice for each unit, with every answer explained.
- Free-response practiceQuestions like the ones on the exam, with a rubric and a model answer.
- Must-know sheetYour one-page cram sheet: the facts and terms to know cold on exam day.
- FlashcardsThe terms and ideas for every unit.
Where these facts come from
College Board runs the exams and can change the rules. If something here doesn't match their site, trust their site.
- AP Computer Science Principles exam page (College Board)
- 2027 AP Exam Dates (College Board)
- Past AP Computer Science Principles Score Distributions (College Board)