The AP English Literature and Composition Exam evaluates your ability to read, analyze, and write about literature, as well as your understanding of literary concepts, techniques, and critical thinking skills.
The best way to prepare for the AP Lit Exam is to familiarize yourself with what to expect, including the test’s format and question types, scoring criteria, and best practices for exam day.
What Does the AP Literature and Composition Exam Cover?
The College Board lists several Skill Categories that are covered in the AP Lit exam, including:[1]
- Character: The characters in literature showcase values, beliefs, biases, cultural norms, and assumptions.
- Setting: The setting represents a time and place, as well as values associated with it.
- Structure: Structure is the arrangement of sections, how they relate to one another, and the sequence in which information is revealed to influence the reader’s interpretation.
- Narration: The narrator’s perspective controls the details and shapes the way the reader encounters information.
- Figurative language: Figurative language, like metaphors, similes, personification, and allusions to enhance meaning and evoke emotions.
- Literary argumentation: The literary argumentation is the reader’s interpretation based on the previous five Skill Categories.
The multiple-choice section of the AP Lit Exam tests your knowledge of the Skill Categories.
AP English Literature and Composition Exam Structure
The exam is limited to three hours across one multiple-choice section and a free-response section.[2]
| Sections | Time Limit | Number of Questions | Percentage of Exam Score |
| Section I | 60 minutes | 55 multiple-choice questions | 45% |
| Section II | 120 minutes, with 40 minutes recommended for each essay | 3 free response questions for Poetry Analysis, Prose Fiction Analysis, and Literary Argument | 55% |
The multiple-choice questions are grouped by passages of prose fiction, drama, or poetry. Each passage has 8-13 questions to evaluate reading comprehension.[3] Each multiple-choice section will have at least 2 prose fiction passages and at least 2 poetry passages.
The free response questions each have their own passage and instructions to complete your essay. The categories include:[4]
- A literary analysis of a given poem
- A literary analysis of a given passage of prose fiction
- An analysis that examines a specific concept, issue, or element in a work selected by a student
How Is the AP Lit Exam Graded?
The multiple-choice section grading is straightforward, with 1 point for each correct answer. There’s no penalty for a guess, so make sure to answer each question to maximize your score.
The free response section is 55% of the total score. The three essays are worth about 18.3% each. The raw score is converted to a score between 1 and 5. According to the College Board Score Distributions, 13.7% of students earned a 5 on the AP English Literature and Composition Exam in 2024.[5]
Each essay receives a score from 0-6 based on the rubric, which evaluates three critical elements:[6]
- Thesis for 0-1 points
- Evidence and Commentary for 0-4 points
- Sophistication for 0-1 points
| Score | Thesis | Evidence and Commentary | Sophistication |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | For any of the following: – There is no defensible thesis. – The intended thesis only restates the prompt. – The intended thesis provides a summary of the issue with no apparent or coherent claim. – There is a thesis, but it does not respond to the prompt. | Simply restates thesis (if present), repeats provided information, or offers information irrelevant to the prompt. | Does not meet the criteria for one point. |
| 1 | Responds to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation of the poem. | EVIDENCE: Provides evidence that is mostly general. AND COMMENTARY: Summarizes the evidence but does not explain how the evidence supports the student’s argument. | Demonstrates sophistication of thought and/or develops a complex literary argument. Responses that earn this point may demonstrate a sophistication of thought or develop a complex literary argument by doing any of the following: 1. Identifying and exploring complexities or tensions within the poem. 2. Illuminating the student’s interpretation by situating it within a broader context. 3. Accounting for alternative interpretations of the poem. 4. Employing a style that is consistently vivid and persuasive. This point should be awarded only if the sophistication of thought or complex understanding is part of the student’s argument, not merely a phrase or reference. |
| 2 | EVIDENCE: Provides some specific, relevant evidence. AND COMMENTARY: Explains how some of the evidence relates to the student’s argument, but no line of reasoning is established, or the line of reasoning is faulty. | ||
| 3 | EVIDENCE: Provides specific evidence to support all claims in a line of reasoning. AND COMMENTARY: Explains how some of the evidence supports a line of reasoning. AND Explains how at least one literary element or technique in the poem contributes to its meaning. | ||
| 4 | EVIDENCE: Provides specific evidence to support all claims in a line of reasoning. AND COMMENTARY: Consistently explains how the evidence supports a line of reasoning. AND Explains how multiple literary elements or techniques in the poem contribute to its meaning. |
How to Prepare for the AP English Literature and Composition Exam
The AP Lit exam can be challenging, but proper preparation is key to feeling confident and using your time wisely on exam day. Here are some tips for success:
Read a Wide Variety of Literary Works
Your AP English Literature course will cover a lot of reading that will develop your analytical reading skills, but you should also read in your spare time to build your skill set. Here are some authors and poets that you should be familiar with:[7]
- William Blake
- Robert Frost
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Alexander Pope
- William Shakespeare
- Walt Whitman
- Aeschylus
- Harold Pinter
- George Bernard Shaw
- Tennessee Williams
- Oscar Wilde
- Sophocles
- Jane Austin
- Charlotte Bronte
- Emily Bronte
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Nathaniel Hawthrone
- Ernest Hemingway
- John Updike
- Mark Twain
- Edith Wharton
- Margaret Atwood
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Ralph Ellison
- William Faulkner
- James Baldwin
- William Hazlitt
- Charles Lamb
- George Orwell
- E.B. White
- Henry David Thoreau
- Virginia Woolf
Build Close Reading Skills
Your AP course will cover close reading and analysis of poetry and prose, but you could always practice more.[8] Close reading is a detailed analysis of a text that focuses on the structure, language, and meaning, and why the author chose them. You will need to revisit to create your arguments in the free response questions and to answer analytical multiple-choice questions.
Familiarize Yourself with Poetry
Poetry can be intimidating, so take some time to read poems from different poets, eras, and themes to familiarize yourself with the language. Understanding poetic devices like iambic pentameter, onomatopoeia, rhyme, assonance, and imagery can strengthen your analytical skills for exam day.
Learn Literary Devices
Literary terms will be part of the exam. While you’ll be covering this in your course, it’s good to practice on your own time to ensure you understand terms like allegory, alliteration, anachronism, colloquialism, epigraph, euphemism, foreshadowing, irony, and metaphor, as well as how they relate to the author’s purpose.
Practice Writing Essays
A lot of your grade will come from your essays, and the time limit can add pressure. Practice your timed essay skills based on the prompts from the College Board. You should also familiarize yourself with the completed essays and scoring to understand what the rubric is looking for.[9]
Prepare for Your Selected Essay
As mentioned, the last essay is an examination of a specific concept, issue, or element in the work you’ve selected. The work you select should be of the same quality as the works you’ve read in your AP course, so make sure you know a few appropriate books well. There’s no required list, but consider works with complex characters, themes, and issues, such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, or The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Complete the Exam Strategically
Working under the time pressure of the AP Lit Exam can be difficult. For the multiple-choice section, answer the questions you know first, then circle back to the others. There’s no penalty for wrong answers, so use the process of elimination to take your best guess and answer every question.
For the essays, many students find it best to begin with the essay that they find easiest. That ensures you complete at least one essay with strong analysis before working on the other two. If you’re running out of time, finish the thesis and at least one paragraph with solid content. You can still get partial credit.
Work on Practice Tests
The College Board provides sample questions to help you prepare for the exam and test your skills.[10] Use all the resources provided to test your skills and familiarize yourself with completing the exam under a time constraint.
Strengthen Your AP Lit Skills
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