The AP Computer Science Principles exam is offered once per academic year, typically in the first or second week of May as part of the College Board's national AP exam administration window. The College Board releases the official exam dates for the upcoming academic year each fall — usually in October or November — so students and teachers should check the AP Exam Schedule page on collegeboard.org for confirmed 2026 exam dates once they are published.
The 2025 AP Computer Science Principles exam was administered on May 15, 2025. This followed the standard College Board practice of scheduling AP CSP during the morning administration slot on a weekday in mid-May. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the exam remained in its digitally administered format, meaning students took the multiple-choice and short-answer sections on a device rather than paper, consistent with how the exam has been delivered since the 2022-2023 school year.
Late testing dates are available for students who have a legitimate conflict with the regular exam date, such as religious observances, another AP exam scheduled at the same time (unlikely given the breadth of the schedule), or illness. Late exams are typically administered approximately two weeks after the regular exam date. Students must request late testing through their AP coordinator well in advance — usually by early March of the exam year. There is an additional fee for late testing, and College Board does not guarantee late testing availability at every school or testing center.
Home-schooled students and students attending schools that do not offer AP courses can still take the AP Computer Science Principles exam. These students must contact College Board by November of the academic year to arrange to test at an authorized AP testing location. College Board maintains a database of willing schools and testing centers that accommodate outside students. The registration fee applies, and students should confirm the testing center's availability and policies early in the academic year since spots can fill quickly in some geographic areas.
The exam registration process begins each fall when schools submit student enrollment lists to College Board. Your AP teacher or school AP coordinator handles the initial registration. Students who join the course after the school registration deadline may still be able to register directly through College Board, but there is an additional fee for late enrollment.
The exam fee for AP Computer Science Principles is the same as other AP exams — currently $98 per exam in the United States, with fee reduction programs available for students who qualify based on income. Schools that serve high proportions of low-income students often receive College Board fee waiver allocations that can significantly reduce or eliminate the exam cost.
Accommodations for students with documented disabilities must be requested through the College Board Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) process. Accommodations can include extended time, a separate testing room, breaks during the exam, use of assistive technology, and other modifications. The SSD approval process takes time — students who expect to need accommodations should work with their school's special education coordinator or 504 coordinator well in advance, ideally in the fall semester. Accommodations approved for the school year's standardized testing are not automatically approved for AP exams; they must go through the College Board SSD process separately.
The AP Computer Science Principles Create Task is a performance task — a substantial piece of work completed over several weeks during the academic year and submitted to College Board before the exam date. The Create Task counts for 30% of your total AP CSP score and is scored independently from the end-of-course exam. Missing the Create Task submission deadline means receiving a 0 on that 30% component, which makes it mathematically impossible to earn a score of 3 or higher on the full exam.
The Create Task due date typically falls in late April, approximately two to three weeks before the exam date. For the 2024-2025 year, the Create Task submission deadline was in late April 2025. College Board sets the exact deadline each year, and your AP teacher will communicate the specific date. All submissions are made through the AP Digital Portfolio on collegeboard.org — students upload their program code, video demonstration, and written responses through this portal.
The Create Task requires students to write a program in a programming language of their choice (Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, and others are all accepted) that incorporates specific required elements. Your program must include a function, use a list, implement an algorithm that includes sequencing/selection/iteration, and be something you developed yourself rather than copied from a tutorial. You also submit a short video demonstrating your program running and written responses explaining specific elements of your code — the algorithm, the data abstraction, and how your program addresses a problem or accomplishes a task.
College Board provides significant guidance on the Create Task requirements through the AP CSP Course and Exam Description (CED), which is free on their website. Your AP teacher is also a critical resource — they can review your Create Task before submission and give feedback (within the bounds of College Board's allowed assistance policy). However, the work must be your own, and teachers are not permitted to write code for students or provide feedback on specific sections of submitted code after the task window opens.
Starting the Create Task early is the single most impactful thing you can do for your AP CSP score. Students who begin their program concept in February or early March have weeks to iterate, debug, and improve before the April deadline. Students who start in April frequently submit incomplete or partially functioning programs under time pressure, which shows in the scoring. The Create Task is also an authentic portfolio item you can reference in college applications and future coding interviews, making the quality of your work valuable beyond just the AP score.
The written response portion of the Create Task requires specific technical vocabulary and precise explanations. You must identify a data abstraction (a list and how it manages complexity), describe the algorithm implemented in your program (the specific sequence of steps including selection and iteration), and explain what your program does and why the algorithm is effective for the intended purpose.
Reading College Board's Create Task scoring guidelines — published as the "Scoring Guidelines" document for each previous year's exam — gives you a precise understanding of what full-score responses look like versus responses that receive partial or no credit. This is time well spent, as many students lose points not because their programs are weak but because their written explanations fail to address the specific scoring criteria clearly.
Collaboration on the Create Task is permitted only within College Board's defined constraints. You may work with a partner to develop a program during the development process, but each student must independently write their own program code and submit their own written responses. Students who submit identical or substantially similar code and written responses to their partner's will receive a score of 0 for the Create Task.
College Board uses plagiarism detection tools that compare submissions, so independent work is not just a policy requirement but a practical necessity for protecting your score. When in doubt about what collaboration is permitted, ask your AP teacher — they have access to the official College Board guidance documents that address specific scenarios.
Format: Digital, administered at school in May
Duration: 2 hours total
Section 1: 70 multiple-choice questions — 1 hour 30 minutes
Section 2: 4 short-answer questions — 30 minutes
Topics: Creative Development, Data, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Systems and Networks, Impact of Computing
Allowed: No external references permitted during the exam; scratch paper allowed
Format: Independent programming project submitted through AP Digital Portfolio
Due: Late April (exact date set annually by College Board)
Components: Written program code, 1-minute video of program running, written responses (approx. 750 words total)
Language: Student's choice — Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, Scratch, and others accepted
Scored on: Program function, algorithm, data abstraction, video, and written responses
Score range: 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest)
Score 3: Qualifying score accepted by most colleges for credit/placement
Score 5: Achieved by approximately 12-18% of test-takers historically
National pass rate (3+): Approximately 65-70% in recent years
Score combination: End-of-course exam + Create Task scores are combined by College Board's scoring algorithm to produce the 1-5 composite score
Effective AP CSP exam preparation centers on mastering the five Big Ideas covered in the AP Computer Science Principles curriculum: Creative Development, Data, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Systems and Networks, and Impact of Computing. The end-of-course exam tests all five areas, though not equally — Algorithms and Programming is the largest content area, comprising approximately 30-35% of exam questions. Data and Analysis is the second largest at around 25%.
The AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description (CED) published by College Board is your most authoritative study guide. It contains the complete list of learning objectives, sample exam questions with answers and explanations, and detailed descriptions of what the Create Task scorers look for. Many students overlook the CED in favor of third-party prep books, but the CED is written by the same team that writes the actual exam and should anchor your preparation. Download the current version from College Board's AP CSP course page — it is free and updated each academic year.
Practice tests are essential for the multiple-choice section. Timed practice under exam-like conditions helps you build comfort with the question format and identify content gaps before the real exam. AP CSP multiple-choice questions often involve reading pseudocode algorithms and predicting their output, analyzing data sets, and evaluating statements about computing impacts — question types that require practice to answer efficiently under time pressure. Working through released free-response questions from previous years is equally important, as the short-answer section rewards clear, concise explanations in your own words rather than memorized definitions.
For the Algorithms and Programming section, hands-on coding experience is more valuable than passive studying. The exam tests your ability to read and reason about algorithms in AP Pseudocode (a simplified notation used in the exam) and to identify how common programming constructs — loops, conditionals, functions, lists — work. Students who have written real programs in any language develop this algorithmic intuition naturally. If you are not building the Create Task in a language you use regularly, practicing simple algorithm challenges on platforms like code.org or Khan Academy's AP CSP course reinforces the mental models the exam tests.
The Impact of Computing topics — digital divide, cybersecurity, privacy, intellectual property, and the societal effects of computing — are sometimes underemphasized in classroom instruction but appear consistently on the exam. These questions require you to apply general principles to specific scenarios, so memorizing definitions is less useful than understanding the underlying tradeoffs.
For example, understanding why encryption protects privacy but also enables criminal activity helps you reason through novel scenarios on the exam without needing to have seen that exact question before. Reading current news articles about technology policy and privacy debates throughout the year builds this applied understanding more effectively than cramming definitions in April.
Bring your student ID — required for check-in at most testing centers.
Know the pseudocode — AP CSP uses its own notation; review the reference sheet included in the CED before exam day.
Flag and return — mark difficult questions and return after completing your first pass through the section.
Short-answer clarity — write concise, direct answers using correct computing vocabulary; graders reward precision, not length.
No outside materials — the end-of-course exam is closed book; no notes, code, or references permitted.
Time management during the end-of-course exam is a skill worth practicing specifically. The 70 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes works out to about 77 seconds per question. Some questions, particularly those involving pseudocode tracing or data analysis, take considerably longer than average, which means you must move quickly on straightforward recall and concept questions to bank time for the harder algorithmic problems.
A useful strategy is to answer the questions you are confident about first, mark the uncertain ones, and return to them after completing your first pass. The digital exam format usually includes a flagging feature that helps manage this process.
Review sessions in the weeks before the exam should focus on your personal weak areas identified through practice tests, not on re-reading content you already know well. Many students spend pre-exam time re-reading notes on topics they find comfortable, which reinforces existing knowledge but doesn't address the content gaps that will actually cost points on exam day. A diagnostic practice exam taken under timed conditions six to eight weeks before the AP exam identifies exactly which Big Ideas and learning objectives need targeted attention, giving you time to address them before the pressure of the final study period.
Computer Systems and Networks is a content area students often find less intuitive than programming. Topics include how the internet works (IP addresses, DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP, packet switching), how data is represented in binary and hexadecimal, how cybersecurity threats like phishing and SQL injection work conceptually, and how computing has affected communication and collaboration globally.
You don't need deep technical knowledge — the exam tests conceptual understanding rather than protocol implementation details. However, you do need to understand why certain design choices were made (like why the internet is fault-tolerant by design) and be able to apply those concepts to scenarios you haven't seen before.
The Data and Analysis Big Idea covers how data is collected, cleaned, analyzed, and used to draw conclusions. Exam questions in this area test whether you can read and interpret simple data visualizations, identify limitations of data sets (bias, incomplete records, missing variables), and understand how machine learning models use training data to make predictions. Students with some statistics background find this section more accessible, but no formal statistics course is required — the concepts are tested at a foundational level that your AP CSP class fully prepares you for if you engage actively with the curriculum throughout the year.
Creative Development, the fifth Big Idea, focuses on the iterative process of developing programs and artifacts. Exam questions in this area test your understanding of how programs are designed and refined, how documentation and collaboration improve programs, and how testing and debugging are integral parts of the development cycle rather than afterthoughts. Your Create Task experience directly reinforces these concepts — students who genuinely iterate and improve their programs during the Create Task period develop stronger intuitions for the Creative Development exam questions than students who produce their program quickly without meaningful revision.