A broad, language-agnostic introduction to computing, the internet, and computational thinking.
Study guide last reviewed September 25, 2026 · see what changed
Format reflects the current published structure — always confirm against AP Central before test day, since formats occasionally change.
| Section | Details | Time | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create Performance Task | Student-developed program submitted before the exam | Done during the course | 30% |
| Section I – Multiple Choice | 70 questions, including some computational-thinking practice items | 2 hr | 70% |
Straight answers about the AP Computer Science Principles exam — format, credit, dates, and this site.
Create Performance Task: Student-developed program submitted before the exam (Done during the course, 30% of the total score); Section I – Multiple Choice: 70 questions, including some computational-thinking practice items (2 hr, 70% of the total score). See the Exam Format tab above for the full breakdown, and always double-check the current year's format on AP Central before test day.
It's multiple-choice questions.
It depends entirely on the college — most award credit for a 3 or higher, but many selective schools require a 4 or a 5, and some don't grant credit at all for certain scores. Always check your target college's own AP credit policy page rather than assuming a 3 will count everywhere.
AP exams are administered during the College Board's annual testing window in the first two full weeks of May, with the exact date and time for each subject set by the College Board and announced the preceding fall. Check AP Central or your school's AP coordinator for this year's exact date.
Yes. The unit-by-unit study guide, worked examples, practice quiz, and full-length timed practice exam on this page are all free, with no login, signup, or paywall.
Unit-by-unit breakdown of what the course actually covers, in teaching order.
The iterative development process (plan, create, test, debug), incremental and collaborative program development, using comments and pseudocode to plan and document programs, and the requirements of the Create Performance Task: a program demonstrating an algorithm with a list, plus a video and written responses explaining your process.
Binary representation of data (how numbers, text, images, and sound are all ultimately stored as bits), data compression (lossy vs. lossless, and the size/quality tradeoff), and extracting information from large datasets — including how metadata and data analysis tools reveal trends not visible in raw data.
Algorithm design and expressing algorithms in pseudocode following the AP Computational Thinking reference sheet's conventions, sequencing/selection/iteration as the three fundamental program control structures, procedures (functions) with parameters and return values, lists and list operations, and simulations as simplified abstractions of real-world processes.
How the internet's packet-switching and TCP/IP protocols route data between devices, fault tolerance through redundancy (multiple paths so failures don't take down the whole network), bandwidth and its effect on data transmission, and abstraction layers that let the internet function without every device understanding every other device's details.
Beneficial and harmful effects of computing innovations, the digital divide and unequal access to computing resources, bias in algorithms (often originating from biased training data rather than code itself), crowdsourcing and its effects on collaboration, and legal/ethical issues including intellectual property, licensing (open source vs. proprietary), and privacy/data collection concerns.
Concrete, fully worked examples — this is what separates a page reviewers see as genuinely useful from one that just lists topics.
What the Create Performance Task actually requires: a to-do list program that stores tasks and marks them complete.
Having a list in your program isn't enough — your written responses must point to the specific lines where an algorithm using that list manages complexity (e.g., a loop that searches the list for a task by name rather than requiring the user to specify a position). Vague descriptions that don't cite actual code cost points here.
Binary and compression: convert 13 to binary, and explain lossy vs. lossless compression.
13 = 8 + 4 + 1 = 1101 in binary. A JPEG uses lossy compression (some image data is permanently discarded to shrink file size); a ZIP file uses lossless compression (the original is fully recoverable) — this distinction is one of the most frequently tested Data-unit facts.
Trace this AP pseudocode: i ← 1 REPEAT 5 TIMES { DISPLAY(i) i ← i + 2 }
Displays 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 — five iterations, i increasing by 2 each pass. MC questions test this exact notation (REPEAT n TIMES vs. REPEAT UNTIL), not general programming syntax, so fluency in AP's specific pseudocode matters more than knowing a real language.
Why doesn't one broken router take down the internet?
Packet-switching routes each packet independently, so if one path between two routers fails, packets simply reroute through an alternate path — this redundancy is exactly what fault tolerance means in this unit, and it's a frequent short-answer topic.
Where does algorithmic bias usually come from? A hiring algorithm trained on historical hiring data underrepresenting a group.
The bias comes from the training data, not from a programmer deliberately writing biased code — the algorithm just learns and repeats the pattern already present in its input. Recognizing this data-driven source (versus assuming malicious code) is exactly what MC questions on this topic test.
The errors that cost the most points across the whole exam, not just one unit.
Unofficial practice questions written for this study guide — not official AP content and not from College Board. Use them to self-check, then use the real past free-response questions below for authentic exam practice.
Unofficial practice exercises. Write your solution, then reveal a sample solution and self-grade against the rubric — there's no compiler here to run your code automatically.
Unofficial practice, timed to feel like the real thing. Section I pulls from this page's full multiple-choice bank; Section II gives you free-response prompts to write out and self-score against a rubric. Bank size is still growing toward full exam length — timing is paced per-question, not pulled from this subject's official duration.