Get ready! The 2025 AP exam season is bringing some big changes you and your AP students need to know about. The College Board® is fast-tracking its shift to the BluebookTM platform for all AP testing. This includes moving 16 AP exams — including AP Psychology, AP Literature, and AP English Language — to a fully digital format. Subjects such as AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics 1 will have a hybrid approach with digital questions and paper-based free-response question (FRQ) sections.1
Beyond the shift to digital testing, however, the College Board is also implementing major content and formatting updates to multiple exams. These updates will impact the way students engage with the material, how they are assessed, and the strategies educators use to prepare them. They are designed to enhance the clarity and focus of each course, ensuring that students are not only mastering the material but also demonstrating their knowledge in a more effective and streamlined way. Let’s explore the specific changes coming to these AP exams to make sure your resources and strategies are up-to-date.
AP Psychology Exam Changes
The AP Psychology exam will see significant updates starting May 2025. Expect a new classification of AP Psychology as a science in addition to a social science, which offers more flexibility for college credits. The course will shift from 9 units to 5, aligning with the American Psychological Association’s (APA) 5 pillars of introductory psychology: biological, cognitive, developmental and learning, social and personality, and mental and physical health.
The revised course will emphasize skills such as content application, research methods, data interpretation, and argumentation, moving away from simple memorization. This new setup is meant to make the curriculum clearer and more focused.
Updated resources in UWorld’s Courses for AP will support these changes, including new content videos and AP-aligned unit assessments. There will be fewer multiple-choice questions, and students will be expected to take the exam digitally using the College Board’s Bluebook app.
AP Literature and English Language Exam Changes
Starting in May 2025, both the AP English Literature and Composition and the AP English Language and Composition exams will feature a significant change in their multiple-choice sections. Specifically, the number of answer choices for each question on both exams will be reduced from five to four. This adjustment aims to streamline the testing process while still rigorously assessing students' abilities to analyze and interpret literary texts and rhetorical strategies.
The course content and skills assessed on both exams will remain unchanged, ensuring that your students continue to be evaluated on their deep understanding of the material. To support this transition, UWorld’s Courses for AP offer comprehensive resources, including realistic multiple-choice practice questions that mimic the ones on the updated AP Lit and AP Lang exams. UWorld also offers in-depth data reports to help you track your students’ progress and to ensure your students adapt smoothly and confidently to the question format change.
AP Chemistry Exam Changes
AP Chemistry will see minor updates while keeping the overall course scope the same for the 2024-25 school year.5 Expect retitled units and topics to better reflect content, based on teacher feedback. A few of the topics have been resequenced as well. The framework will no longer include "big ideas" and "enduring understandings."
The equation sheet will be updated for better organization and consistency with other AP science courses. The exam’s structure will stay the same, including question types, timing, and unit and skill distribution. Updated resources in AP Classroom, such as new AP Daily topic videos, will support these changes. These updates provide clarity and will help your students engage more effectively with the material.
AP Physics 1 Exam Changes
Big updates are coming for AP Physics 1 in the 2024-25 school year.6 The curriculum now includes the study of fluids — previously in AP Physics 2 — aligning with the old Physics B material. You’ll also see new topics such as the parallel axis theorem, the center-of-mass formula, and a quantitative understanding of elliptical orbits.
The exam format will be standardized across all AP Physics exams, featuring 40 multiple-choice questions and 4 free-response questions, with your students getting 80 minutes for the multiple-choice section and 100 minutes for the free-response section. Free-response questions will cover mathematical routines, representation translation, experimental design and analysis, and qualitative/quantitative translation. Consistent equation sheets and approved calculators will be used for all exams. These updates clarify the skills required for algebra-based and calculus-based physics courses, ensuring consistency and clarity across the board.
Adapting Teaching Resources to Keep Up
To stay ahead of these changes, regularly review and update your teaching materials. Here are some tips:
Review Instructional and Study Materials
- Regularly check that your materials align with the new exam formats.7 This ensures your students are practicing with the right content.
- Utilize instructional resources, such as those offered by UWorld, to enhance student engagement and understanding. UWorld’s updated instructional content includes interactive study guides, slide presentations for whole group instruction, engaging videos, and other instructional tools that can make lesson planning easy to align with exam changes.
- Collaborate with colleagues to share updated teaching strategies. Sharing resources and experiences can help everyone stay on track.
- Integrate UWorld's Courses for AP into your instruction. These include instructional resources for teachers, exam-like practice questions with detailed answer explanations , and personalized performance tracking, which can help ensure your students are thoroughly prepared for the exams.
Prioritize Professional Development and Training
- Attend College Board AP Summer Institutes and workshops. These offer in-depth training on course content and exam updates.
- Participate in online webinars and training sessions focused on the new exam formats, including those offered by UWorld. These sessions provide flexible learning opportunities and can help you stay current.
- Join professional learning communities to share insights and strategies. Networking with other educators can provide valuable support and ideas.
By keeping your resources and teaching strategies up-to-date, you’ll help your students succeed on all their AP exams.
References
- Academic Approach. (2023). 2025 AP shakeup: 16 subjects transition to all-digital format. Retrieved from https://www.academicapproach.com/2025-ap-shakeup-16-subjects-transition-to-all-digital-format/
- College Board. (2023). AP Psychology course and exam revisions (2024-25). Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-psychology/revisions-2024-25
- College Board. (2023). AP exam dates. Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/exam-administration-ordering-scores/exam-dates
- College Board. (2023). Digital AP exams: 28 exams going digital in 2025. Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/exam-administration-ordering-scores/digital-ap-exams/28-exams-digital-2025
- College Board. (2023). AP Chemistry course updates (2024-25). Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-chemistry/updates-2024-25
- College Board. (2023). AP Physics course and exam revisions (2024-25). Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-physics/revisions-2024-25
- College Board. (2023). Important updates for AP coordinators. Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/ap-coordinators/important-updates