AP exam season: how to plan backwards from the exam fortnight when you are writing several exams, with the practice-test method staggered across them

AP exams are written over two weeks in May, in morning and afternoon sittings set by the College Board, and the dates change every year; the only schedule to trust is the one on the College Board's own AP site for this year. What you can plan without the dates is the shape: count back from the exam fortnight, give each exam its own diagnostic and error log, stagger the final weeks so no two exams peak on the same day, and keep the earlier exam's last two days light. Here is the plan, backwards.

Where the AP exam schedule is, and why we do not print it

The College Board publishes the schedule each year on its AP site: two weeks in May, each weekday with a morning sitting and an afternoon sitting, and a late-testing week after them for students whose exams conflict or who cannot sit on the day. The schedule was read there on the day this page was last reviewed: the published 2027 dates fall in the first two weeks of May, with late testing the week after. Confirm them on the College Board's own page, because dates and start times can change.

This page says "the first two weeks of May" and nothing more exact, on purpose. A schedule copied onto a page like this one goes stale every June, and a student who plans from a stale copy plans for the wrong day. Open the official schedule, find your courses, and write the day and the sitting of each into the grid below. Those are your dates; everything on this page is counted back from them.

How AP exams are scored, in one paragraph

In our words, from the College Board's own description. Most AP exams have a multiple-choice section and a free-response section; a few courses, such as the art portfolios, are assessed partly or wholly by work submitted during the year. The two are weighted differently by course, half and half for some, more to one side for others, and the combined result is converted to a score from 1 to 5. The free-response section is marked by readers against published scoring guidelines, which is why those guidelines are the thing to study from. Scores are released in July. What a 3, a 4 or a 5 earns in credit or placement is each college's own policy, and nothing on this page claims any of it.

One sentence about score calculators, which are a category of tool and not a plan: a calculator estimates a composite from your two section scores, and it cannot tell you which skills to fix. The error log can, and it is the whole of the plan below.

The shape of the fortnight: your exams on a grid

Draw ten weekdays by two sittings, twenty cells, and mark your exams in from the official schedule.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Week 1, morning
Week 1, afternoon
Week 2, morning
Week 2, afternoon

Three patterns come out of the grid, and each does something to the plan:

• An exam in each week. The easy case. Each exam gets a clean final week, and the first exam's final week does not overlap the second's.
• Two exams in one week. The second exam's final week is the first exam's too. The earlier exam gets the full compressed last week; the later one is held in maintenance until the earlier is written, then gets the two or three days that remain.
• Two exams in one day. The morning exam's last two days are light, so the afternoon exam's final review has to happen earlier. The section on this below.

Plan backwards: the eight weeks

Each exam is a column; the weeks count down. The method inside every cell is the hub's, the practice-test method and the error log: a released full exam under time, graded with the College Board's own scoring guidelines, every miss logged by skill, drills on the top three, a retake.

Weeks out	Every exam	The stagger
8	The diagnostic: one released full exam under time, graded by the guidelines, the error log by skill	One diagnostic per weekend, not three in one
7 to 5	The units by worked example and recall; one released free-response set per course per week, under time, self-scored	Courses on alternating days
4 to 3	A second released full exam per course; the log's top three skills per course	The second exams staggered across two weekends
2	The earlier-week exams: the compressed one-week plan. The later-week exams: maintenance, recall only, nothing new
1, the fortnight	The day before any exam light; the day between two exams recall and sleep

Why alternating days: Rohrer and Taylor (2007) found that students who practised problem types shuffled did worse during practice and better on a later test than students who practised in blocks. Mixing courses across the week does for the courses what mixing problem types inside a session does for the skills, and inside a session the shuffle is the exam's own shape, because no question on the paper says which unit it comes from.

Why eight weeks and not a long weekend: Cepeda and colleagues (2008) found that the best gap between two visits to the same material grows with the time until the test, and that a gap far too short costs a lot. Two full exams per course four weeks apart, with weekly free-response sets between, is that spacing. And every released set under time is retrieval, which Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found produced better recall a week later than rereading did.

Worked example: three exams, one fortnight, the hours

Our own generic case, with no real dates: Exam A on day 1 of the fortnight, Exam B on day 4, Exam C on day 9.

The hours. Three courses × two full released exams × about three hours each is 18 hours of full exams across the eight weeks. Six free-response sets per course at about an hour each is another 18 hours. That is 36 hours of tests and sets before any review. Divided by eight weeks, 36 ÷ 8 = 4.5 hours a week on released material alone; the review of the log's skills sits on top, and it is where the rest of the week goes. The arithmetic is an illustration, not a prescription: a course whose released exams run two hours, or which you are strong in, needs less.

The stagger. Exam A's compressed one-week plan runs days −7 to −1 before the fortnight. Exam B is three days after A, so B's one-week plan cannot run in that same week; B is in maintenance while A peaks, and its compressed plan is the three days between A and B, days 2 and 3 of the fortnight, with day 3 light. Exam C has a clean run: its maintenance week is the fortnight's first week, and its final days are 5 to 8, with day 8 light.

The day between A and B. Recall on B's error log in the morning, nothing new, a walk, an early night. The temptation is to open B's hardest unit at 9 pm the day after A; the all-nighter guide below is the reason not to.

Two exams in one day

The grid shows it, and the plan has to bend for it. The morning exam's last two days are light by rule, which means the afternoon exam's final review cannot be the night before either. Move it to three days out: the afternoon exam's compressed plan ends on day −3, and days −2 and −1 are recall only for both.

Lunch and water are planning items. Eat before the morning exam, pack food for the gap, and know where the afternoon venue is; if the school uses two rooms, the walk between them is on the plan.

Late testing exists for genuine conflicts. When two of your exams fall at the same time, the College Board schedules one of them in the late-testing week, and your school's AP coordinator orders it; you can register for both. Ask the coordinator early, in the ordering window, not in May.

Week 2 and the fortnight: light, then sleep

Week 2 for an earlier-week exam is the compressed one-week plan: the log's remaining skills on days 6 to 3, a timed section on day 2, a light day 1. Chapter 9 of the free playbook is those seven days as a calendar you can fill in once per exam.

The fortnight itself is recall and sleep. The day before any exam is light: the error log read once, the cards, nothing new. Rasch and Born (2013) review decades of evidence that new material is consolidated during sleep; the night before stores the eight weeks, and what an all-nighter costs has the measured price of giving it up. Nerves fall when the format is familiar, which four released exams and a dozen free-response sets under time will have made it; the test-anxiety guide has the evidence.

The guides, exam by exam

Each of these has its own plan, six or eight weeks long, that drops into the grid above as one column.

• AP Calculus AB and BC: the units, the free-response habit, the overlap with Grade 12 calculus, a six-week plan.
• AP Chemistry: the nine units sorted into procedures and vocabulary, the calculator discipline, an eight-week plan.
• AP Biology: vocabulary against mechanism, the eight diagrams, the free-response verbs, an eight-week plan.
• AP Psychology: the vocabulary problem and the scenario card, research methods first.
• AP English Language: the three essays and the move each one wants, the evidence bank.
• AP Statistics: the four-step inference answer, the calculator discipline.
• AP Precalculus: the examined units, the modelling habit, the overlap with the functions courses.

The season, on one screen

• The schedule is the College Board's, for this year, on its own site. Write your dates into the grid; this page prints none.
• Scoring: multiple choice and free response, weighted by course, converted to 1 to 5, released in July.
• The grid: ten weekdays by two sittings; the pattern it shows decides the final week.
• Eight weeks: a diagnostic per exam, staggered; alternating days; a free-response set per course per week; second exams at four to three weeks out; the earlier exam's compressed last week while the later waits.
• The hours: about 36 hours of released exams and sets for three courses, 4.5 a week, plus the review the log names.
• The fortnight: the day before light; the day between two exams recall and sleep.