AP World History: Modern Tutoring for the May Exam
AP World History: Modern runs from about 1200 to the present and, by College Board’s design, puts no single region at the centre of the story, so students have to keep the whole world in view at once. The exam then asks them to compare developments across regions and periods and to argue about them in writing, which rewards a clear chronological framework far more than a store of isolated facts.
Short answer
AP World History: Modern 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 25 September 2027.
From USD 65 per lesson
- 3 scored components, from AP Central
- Live online lessons of 90 minutes
- From USD 65 per lesson
How AP World History: Modern 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 World History: Modern · AP Central exam page
| Component | Share of score | Length | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section I, Part A: Multiple Choice | 40% | 55 min | 55 questions in 55 minutes, usually in sets of 3–4 built on primary and secondary sources, images, graphs and maps. |
| Section I, Part B: Short Answer | 20% | 40 min | 3 questions in 40 minutes, all compulsory from May 2027: question 1 uses a secondary text source, question 2 a primary text source and question 3 a primary or secondary non-text source, each on a different period between 1200 and 2001. |
| Section II: Document-Based Question and Long Essay | 40% | 1 hour 40 min | 2 questions in 1 hour 40 minutes. The Document-Based Question (25%, about 1 hour including a 15-minute reading period) asks for an argument built from 7 documents on developments between 1200 and 2001; the Long Essay (15%, about 40 minutes) is now a single required prompt spanning roughly half of the course’s periods. |
- The whole exam is taken in College Board’s Bluebook app.
- 2027 exam date: 6 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 World History: Modern syllabus
Topic names are left in English, as they appear on the paper and in the mark scheme.
Unit 1: The Global Tapestry (8–10%)
Developments in East Asia from c. 1200 to c. 1450 · Developments in Dar al-Islam from c. 1200 to c. 1450 · Developments in South and Southeast Asia from c. 1200 to c. 1450 · State Building in the Americas · State Building in Africa · Developments in Europe from c. 1200 to c. 1450
Unit 2: Networks of Exchange (8–10%)
The Silk Roads · The Mongol Empire and the Making of the Modern World · Exchange in the Indian Ocean · Trans-Saharan Trade Routes · Cultural Consequences of Connectivity · Environmental Consequences of Connectivity
Unit 3: Land-Based Empires (12–15%)
Empires Expand · Empires: Administration · Empires: Belief Systems · Comparison in Land-Based Empires
Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections (12–15%)
Technological Innovations from 1450 to 1750 · Exploration: Causes and Events from 1450 to 1750 · Columbian Exchange · Maritime Empires Established · Internal and External Challenges to State Power from 1450 to 1750 · Changing Social Hierarchies from 1450 to 1750
Unit 5: Revolutions (12–15%)
The Enlightenment · Nationalism and Revolutions in the Period from 1750 to 1900 · Industrial Revolution Begins · Industrialization Spreads in the Period from 1750 to 1900 · Reactions to the Industrial Economy from 1750 to 1900 · Society and the Industrial Age
Unit 6: Consequences of Industrialization (12–15%)
Rationales for Imperialism from 1750 to 1900 · State Expansion from 1750 to 1900 · Indigenous Responses to State Expansion from 1750 to 1900 · Economic Imperialism from 1750 to 1900 · Causes of Migration in an Interconnected World · Effects of Migration
Unit 7: Global Conflict (8–10%)
Shifting Power After 1900 · Causes of World War I · Economy in the Interwar Period · Causes of World War II · Mass Atrocities After 1900
Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization (8–10%)
The Cold War · Spread of Communism After 1900 · Decolonization After 1900 · Newly Independent States · Global Resistance to Established Power Structures After 1900 · End of the Cold War
Unit 9: Globalization (8–10%)
Advances in Technology and Exchange After 1900 · Technological Advances and Limitations After 1900: Disease · Technological Advances: Debates About the Environment After 1900 · Economics in the Global Age · Calls for Reform and Responses After 1900 · Institutions Developing in a Globalized World
Where AP World History: Modern marks are usually lost
Reaching for evidence from the wrong century
The Document-Based Question rubric is explicit: outside evidence from beyond the time period or region specified in the prompt does not earn the point. In a course spanning centuries and continents, students often reach for a famous example — the Mongols, the Atlantic slave trade, decolonisation — that belongs to a different period from the one the prompt names. Knowing roughly when things happened is part of answering correctly.
Comparing by listing
Comparison is one of the course’s reasoning processes, and a prompt can ask how developments in different regions were alike or different. Students lose marks by writing a paragraph on each region and leaving the reader to find the comparison. A real comparison explains why the similarity or difference existed. The complexity point can be earned by explaining both similarity and difference, which only a planned comparison delivers.
Reading a historian as if it were a primary source
The first short-answer question is built on a secondary text: a passage in which a historian or other scholar puts forward an interpretation. Students lose marks by treating it like a primary source and commenting on the author’s era, or by answering from general knowledge without engaging with the passage’s claim. The task is to grasp the author’s argument first, then answer each part with evidence that bears on it.
How we teach AP World History: Modern
A tutor gives AP World History: Modern a frame before filling it in: the course’s periods, its regions as College Board maps them, and a few processes — state building, trade networks, industrialisation, imperialism — traced across all of them. New content is always placed on that frame, so a student learning about the Songhai Empire also knows what was happening in the Ottoman Empire and Ming China at the same time. African states named in the course, from Mali to the Asante and the Kingdom of the Kongo, are used where they fit, while coverage stays as balanced as the course requires. Writing is weekly and typed: short answers on sources, then full Document-Based Questions and long essays scored against College Board’s rubrics.
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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