AP United States Government and Politics Tutoring for the May Exam
AP United States Government and Politics looks like civics, but the exam treats it as political science: students must know the required Supreme Court cases and foundational documents in detail, then apply them to scenarios, data and cases they have never seen. For students outside the United States the institutions themselves are new, so there is no everyday background to fall back on.
Short answer
AP United States Government and Politics is offered online, one-to-one or in a group class.
A private lesson runs 90 minutes and starts at USD 65 per lesson; the group course runs 50 lessons of 90 minutes for USD 1,755, and a class never takes more than 6 students.
Group classes next begin on 27 September 2027.
From USD 65 per lesson
- 2 scored components, from AP Central
- Live online lessons of 90 minutes
- From USD 65 per lesson
How AP United States Government and Politics is assessed
Set and scored by College Board and reported on the 1–5 AP scale. Each university sets its own rule on which scores earn credit or placement. Component names are as College Board prints them.
College Board
AP United States Government and Politics · AP Central exam page
| Component | Share of score | Length | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section I: Multiple Choice | 50% | 1 hour 20 min | 55 questions in 1 hour 20 minutes: about 30 standalone questions without a stimulus, plus sets built on quantitative data, primary and secondary texts, and visual sources. |
| Section II: Free Response | 50% | 1 hour 40 min | 4 questions in 1 hour 40 minutes, typed in Bluebook: Concept Application (a political scenario), Quantitative Analysis (data linked to a political principle, institution or process), SCOTUS Comparison (a non-required Supreme Court case set against a required one) and an Argument Essay built on the required foundational documents. For 2026-27 that list adds the Emancipation Proclamation, Federalist No. 39, the Gettysburg Address and core principles from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. |
- The whole exam is taken in College Board’s Bluebook app.
- 2027 exam date: 4 May 2027.
Checked on 8 October 2026
College Board revises individual exams between years. The exam page linked above is the authority for your sitting.
The AP United States Government and Politics syllabus
Topic names are left in English, as they appear on the paper and in the mark scheme.
Unit 1: Foundations of American Democracy (15–22%)
The ideals of democracy as shown in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution · Federalist and Anti-Federalist views on central government and democracy · Separation of powers and “checks and balances” · The relationship between the states and the national government (federalism) · How federalism has been interpreted differently over time
Unit 2: Interactions Among Branches of Government (25–36%)
The structures, powers, and functions of each house of Congress · The roles and powers of the president · The roles and powers of the Supreme Court and other federal courts · The roles of the federal bureaucracy (departments, agencies, commissions, and government corporations)
Unit 3: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (13–18%)
The intent of the Bill of Rights · The First Amendment and how the Supreme Court has interpreted it · The Second Amendment and how the Supreme Court has interpreted it · Supreme Court interpretations of other amendments · How the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment have motivated social movements
Unit 4: American Political Ideologies and Beliefs (10–15%)
How cultural and social factors affect citizens’ beliefs about government · How polls are used to gather data about public opinion · The ideologies of the Democratic and Republican parties · How political ideologies affect policy on economic and social issues
Unit 5: Political Participation (20–27%)
Laws that protect the right to vote · Why it’s hard for third parties and independent candidates to succeed · Interest groups and their influence · Campaign finance and its role in elections · The media’s role in elections
Where AP United States Government and Politics marks are usually lost
Naming the case without knowing the holding
The SCOTUS Comparison question gives a summary of a case students have not studied and asks them to compare it with a required case. Much of the credit depends on describing the required case accurately — its facts, the constitutional issue, the holding — and explaining a similarity or difference. Students who remember only the case name, or who simply summarise the case shown on screen, cannot earn that credit.
Rebutting a document instead of a perspective
The Argument Essay awards a point for responding to an opposing or alternate perspective, and the scoring notes are strict: the response must describe the other view and then rebut or refute it. Restating the opposite of one’s own claim does not count, and nor does attacking a foundational document rather than an alternative perspective. An essay with a sound thesis and good evidence can still lose this point.
Describing the data without the politics
The Quantitative Analysis question presents data in a table, graph or map and asks students to describe a trend, draw a conclusion, then explain how the data demonstrate a political principle, institution, process, policy or behaviour. Students lose marks by reading values correctly and stopping there, or by concluding more than the data support. The final step — the link to a course concept — is where the question becomes political science.
How we teach AP United States Government and Politics
A tutor builds AP US Government outwards from the founding texts. The student reads key passages of the required foundational documents — the Constitution, Federalist No. 10, Brutus No. 1 and the rest — closely enough to quote them and use them as evidence, and learns each required Supreme Court case as a short brief: facts, issue, holding and reasoning. Every unit then moves to application: a current political scenario, a dataset or an unfamiliar case, answered in writing and scored against College Board’s scoring guidelines. Students from outside the United States often benefit from comparing American institutions with their own country’s constitution and parliament, which makes federalism, the separation of powers and judicial review easier to grasp. The Argument Essay is practised all year, with particular care over the rebuttal.
There is no separate diagnostic, because there is no single test that stands in for two years of a school syllabus. The first lesson is the assessment: the tutor works through your recent marked work, past-paper questions from your own specification, and the units your school has already covered, and reads current level, gaps, exam technique and where school work stands. It is a normal paid lesson and it teaches as it assesses.
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