Aim for FiveEnglish Literature

Exam guide

The AP® English Literature and Composition 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.

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 English Literature exam for 2027. Every course's changes

See College Board's list (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · AP English Literature and Composition row, Most Recent Change column)

Changed in the last two years (1)
  • Multiple choice questions have 4 answer choicesMay 2025

    Each multiple choice question has 4 answer choices instead of 5.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · AP English Literature and Composition row, Most Recent Change column)

How the exam is set up

The sections of the 2027 English Literature exam
SectionQuestionsTimeShare of score
Multiple choice5 sets of 8 to 13 questions, each on a passage of prose fiction, drama or poetry, with at least 2 prose and 2 poetry passages. Each question has 4 answer choices.55 questions1 hour45%
Free responseA poetry analysis, a prose fiction analysis, and a literary argument about a work you choose. About 40 minutes each is suggested.3 essays2 hours55%

What's on the exam

The units build skills you use across the whole exam, so College Board doesn't weight the exam by unit.

  1. Unit 1Short Fiction I
  2. Unit 2Poetry I
  3. Unit 3Longer Fiction or Drama I
  4. Unit 4Short Fiction II
  5. Unit 5Poetry II
  6. Unit 6Longer Fiction or Drama II
  7. Unit 7Short Fiction III
  8. Unit 8Poetry III
  9. Unit 9Longer Fiction or Drama III

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 English Literature 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

AP® English Literature and Composition scores in 2026, percent of students
Score of 5
16%
Score of 4
26%
Score of 3
31%
Score of 2
16%
Score of 1
11%

Scores of 3 or higher (73% of students) have green bars; 2s and 1s have gray ones. A 3 is where many colleges start to give credit.

In 2026, 73% of students scored 3 or higher, and 16% got a 5. The most common score was a 3.

In 2025, 416,531 students took the exam. 74.2% scored 3 or higher, 16.2% got a 5, and the average score was 3.24. College Board hasn't published the 2026 number of students or average score yet.

Source: College Board's AP English Literature and Composition score distributions. Percentages are College Board's, rounded, so they may not add to exactly 100. Compare every course.

Is AP® English Literature and Composition hard?

Judging by pass rates alone, English Literature is about in the middle. In 2026, 73% of students scored 3 or higher: the 12th highest pass rate of the 27 exams on this site. 16% got a 5, tied for the 16th highest share of 5s.

English Literature tests how well you read poems, stories and plays you've never seen before, so it's hard to cram.

More than half your score (55%) comes from three essays in 2 hours, and one asks you to write about a book or play you choose. Have a few works you know really well.

Poetry shows up in both sections, so practice reading it closely.

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

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.