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Exam guide

The AP® Statistics 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 2 (usually afternoon). 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
A graphing calculator with statistics functions is expected on the whole exam. Bluebook has a graphing calculator built in, and you can bring your own approved one too. Nongraphing calculators aren't allowed in 2027.
Reference sheet
A formula sheet and tables (normal, t and chi-square), on both sections, printed and in Bluebook.

See every exam on one page in the 2027 exam calendar.

New

What's new for the May 2027 exam

College Board changed 6 things about the Statistics exam. Open one to see what it means for you.

  • A new course with 5 units

    Units 1 to 8 were combined into 5 units, and Unit 9 (inference for slopes) was removed. Departures from linearity, combining random variables, the geometric distribution and chi-square goodness of fit tests were removed too.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Course Revisions section)

  • New topics on investigative questions

    You'll learn how to ask a statistical question that a study can answer.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Course Revisions section)

  • 42 multiple choice questions with 4 answer choices

    It was 40 questions with 5 choices each. Two sets have 3 questions each: one on probability and one on regression.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Multiple-Choice Section)

  • 4 free-response questions worth 10 points each

    It was 6 questions worth 4 points each.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Free-Response Section)

  • Fully digital, with no paper booklet

    You answer both sections in Bluebook, so you type your free-response answers instead of handwriting them.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Fully Digital Testing section)

  • Graphing calculators only

    Calculators that can't graph aren't allowed anymore, even ones with the statistics functions you need.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · Update for 2027 AP Statistics Exams)

Updated October 3, 2026 from College Board's pages. All 2027 exam changes

How the exam is set up

The sections of the 2027 Statistics exam
SectionQuestionsTimeShare of score
Multiple choiceMostly single questions, plus two sets of 3 questions: one on probability and one on regression.42 questions1 hour 30 minutes50%
Free responseThree questions that each mix several skills, and one inference question: a hypothesis test or a confidence interval.4 questions1 hour 30 minutes50%

What's on the exam

College Board says roughly how much of the exam comes from each unit. The biggest is Unit 1, Exploring One-Variable Data and Collecting Data (20–30%).

  1. Unit 1Exploring One-Variable Data and Collecting Data20–30%
  2. Unit 2Probability, Random Variables, and Probability Distributions15–25%
  3. Unit 3Inference for Categorical Data: Proportions15–25%
  4. Unit 4Inference for Quantitative Data: Means10–20%
  5. Unit 5Regression Analysis10–20%

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 Statistics 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® Statistics scores in 2026, percent of students
Score of 5
17%
Score of 4
23%
Score of 3
22%
Score of 2
17%
Score of 1
21%

Scores of 3 or higher (62% of students) have green bars; 2s and 1s have gray ones. A 3 is where many colleges start to give credit.

In 2026, 62% of students scored 3 or higher, and 17% got a 5. The most common score was a 4.

In 2025, 266,791 students took the exam. 60.3% scored 3 or higher, 17% got a 5, and the average score was 2.92. College Board hasn't published the 2026 number of students or average score yet.

The 2027 exam has some changes (see what's new above), so these scores came from a slightly different exam.

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

Is AP® Statistics hard?

Judging by pass rates alone, Statistics is one of the harder exams to pass. In 2026, 62% of students scored 3 or higher: the lowest pass rate of the 27 exams on this site. 17% got a 5, the 15th highest share of 5s.

Statistics uses less algebra than other math courses, but it asks for careful reasoning and clear writing. Answers need to talk about the context of the problem to earn full credit.

The course was redesigned for 2026–27, with 5 units and a new exam, so the 2026 scores came from the older version.

You get a formula sheet and tables, and you can use a graphing calculator on the whole exam (Bluebook has one built in).

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.