AP world-history exam, multiple-choice questions

This one's for Paul! I hope this is more to your liking.

Advanced Placement is an American term for college-prep-level classes taught to high schoolers, usually juniors and seniors (3rd and 4th years in a four-year high school). AP tests are scored from 1 to 5; students can sign up to take as many AP tests as are relevant. In high school, I had courses in AP calculus, AP French 5, and AP English. I didn't take AP levels of science or history. I got a 5 on the AP French test (just a matter of walking in, taking the test, and walking out—absurdly easy); I got a 5 on the AP English test (the one I'm really proud of, even now); I got a measly 3 on the AP calculus test, which was enough to give me 3 science credits at Georgetown University (we French majors had to have 6 credits of science; for my other 3 credits, I took psychology, then I went ahead and took abnormal psychology, which was a hoot). My 5 on the English AP meant I didn't have to take a single college-level English class (poetry & other lit, etc.); French majors had to have 6 English credits, and a 5 on the AP meant 6 credits. My 5 on the French AP meant I had to take the university's own placement test; I finished 30 minutes before the second student to finish, and I scored high enough to be placed directly into junior-year-level French, i.e., no language labs for me—just straight into classes that were 100% in French. 

Below is a sample set of AP world-history questions, straight from the College Board site. I imagine big brains like Paul's will find them laughably easy. The questions look hard to me since I'm a history idiot, but a few of them also look as if they can be figured out simply through reason and common sense—not a good sign, and one of the flaws of a multiple-choice exam. Of course, AP tests are more than just multiple choice: they also have short-answer and essay components, a lot like the university-level exams I took at Georgetown (pretty much all short-answer and essay) and in grad school (Catholic U.). I'm not reproducing those parts of the exam here, but I might convert the questions below into HTML with the help of ChatGPT. Assuming this file I'm looking at has the correct answers somewhere.

Ready? I've reprinted only the first 12 of 55 multiple-choice questions. If you want to try your hand at the full exam, the PDF is here. Here we go.

Questions 1–3 refer to the passage below.

“And if you, my vassal, disobey or break this treaty, may the god Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and earth, put an end to all vegetation in your land. May his waters hit your land with a severe destructive downpour. May locusts devour your crops. May there be no sound of grinding stone in your houses. May the wild animals eat your bread, and may your spirit have no one to take care of it and pour offerings of wine for it.” 

Excerpt from a treaty between an Assyrian king and the

ruler of a subject city-state in northwestern Iran, circa 670 BCE 

1. The particular consequences invoked in the ritual curse in the treaty most strongly support which of the following statements about ancient Mesopotamia? 

(A) States’ legitimacy was based on claims to secular authority. 
(B) Ongoing environmental degradation occurred as a byproduct of the spread of pastoralism. 
(C) Maintaining and expanding agricultural production was seen as a core task of governments. 
(D) The domestication of plants occurred before the domestication of animals.

2. A historian would most likely use this passage in the treaty to illustrate which of the following? 

(A) The precarious nature of early civilizations’ relationship to their physical environment 
(B) The negative effect of overpopulation on urban sanitation and health 
(C) The emergence of social hierarchies supported by unequal distribution of surplus food 
(D) The nutritional deficiencies suffered by early agricultural populations 

3. Which of the following was an important long-term effect of the expansion of the Assyrian Empire? 

(A) The diffusion of monotheistic religious beliefs to East Asia 
(B) The development of the Greek alphabet 
(C) The initial diffusion of advanced mathematical knowledge, such as algebra and trigonometry 
(D) The establishment of Jewish diasporic communities as a result of Assyrian military conquest

Questions 4–6 refer to the passage below. 

“Marriage precedes all other duties of life. The different kinds of marriage are: 

• the giving in marriage of a bride with a dowry . . . 
• the giving in marriage of a bride in exchange for a couple of cows 
• the giving in marriage of a bride to a priest 

• the voluntary union of a maiden and her lover 
• the giving in marriage of a bride after receiving plenty of wealth from the groom’s family 

Of these, the first three are ancestral customs of old and are valid on their being approved of by the father of the bride. The rest are to be sanctioned by both the father and the mother. . . . Any kind of marriage [that meets the above conditions] is approvable. . . . 

Sons begotten by men of higher caste and women of lower caste are considered to be of mixed caste. Sons begotten by men of lower caste and women of higher caste originate on account of kings violating all norms of proper behavior.” 

Arthashastra, a legal and political treatise produced for Chandragupta, a Hindu ruler of the Mauryan dynasty in India, circa 300 BCE

4. Compared to the regulations in the excerpt, Buddhist practices concerning gender roles in the period 600 CE to 600 BCE differed in that they 

(A) rejected the validity of marriage as an institution 
(B) offered women and men the possibility of monastic life as an alternative to marriage 
(C) gave the bride’s mother, rather than the father, the primary role in making marriage decisions 
(D) asserted that only marriages based on the free choice of both spouses were valid 

5. The views expressed in the excerpt are best seen as evidence of which of the following in Mauryan society? 

(A) The persistence of patriarchy 
(B) The absence of inter-caste marriages 
(C) The social acceptance of children born out of wedlock 
(D) The rulers’ lax enforcement of religious doctrine 

6. Which of the following changes to Mauryan religious policy occurred under Chandragupta’s grandson, Emperor Ashoka? 

(A) The emergence of a syncretic Indo-Greek system of religious belief 
(B) The secularization of the Mauryan state 
(C) The promotion of Buddhist teachings through edicts by the ruler 
(D) The establishment of Islam as the dominant religion of northern India

Questions 7–9 refer to the passage below. 

“The ruler is a boat; people are the water. The water can carry the boat; the water can capsize the boat. . . . A man may be the descendant of kings, lords, or nobles, but if he does not observe the norms of ritual and proper behavior he must be relegated to the status of a commoner. Similarly, he may be a descendant of commoners, but if he accumulates learning of the texts, corrects his behavior, and observes the norms of ritual and proper behavior—then he must be elevated to the ranks of high ministers, lords, and nobles.” 

Xunzi, Chinese philosopher, circa 250 BCE 

7. According to the passage, Xunzi was advocating an approach to governance that most clearly reflected the principles of 

(A) Daoism 
(B) Legalism 
(C) Confucianism 
(D) Buddhism 

8. Xunzi’s idealized vision of Chinese society in the passage differs most strongly from the social structure of which of the following? 

(A) Roman society during the late empire 
(B) Hindu society in South Asia during the Gupta Empire 
(C) Muslim society during the early Caliphates 
(D) Mongol society during the period of Mongol conquests 

9. Ideas similar to those expressed in the passage have directly contributed to the development of which of the following aspects of later Chinese imperial history? 

(A) The long-standing tradition of Chinese leadership in technological, agricultural, and commercial innovation relative to the rest of the world 
(B) The expectation that emperors must be judged by a different set of ethical standards all other members of society 
(C) The virtual elimination of the threat of rebellion against established political authority 
(D) The practice of recruiting capable bureaucrats on the basis of educational achievement rather than noble birth

Questions 10–12 refer to the graph below.

10. Which of the following best explains the overall demographic trend shown in the chart? 

(A) The spread of the bubonic plague by the Mongol invasions 
(B) Migrations to Christian population centers in the Mediterranean 
(C) Forced migration of populations by the Roman government 
(D) Invasions by Germanic and Central Asian peoples 

11. Which of the following best describes the Roman response to the trend shown on the chart? 

(A) Shifting power and resources to the east, eventually resulting in the creation of the Byzantine Empire 
(B) Sponsoring the further development of commercial infrastructure, particularly roads 
(C) Adopting Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, under the emperor Constantine 
(D) Building an elaborate system of fortifications along the northern frontier, such as Hadrian’s Wall 

12. Which of the following emerged in western Europe after 500 CE in large part as a reaction to the changes illustrated by the chart? 

(A) The development of cash crop plantations relying on slave labor 
(B) The binding of peasants to the land as part of the development of feudal society 
(C) The shift from agriculture to nomadic pastoralism in most of western Europe 
(D) The development of self-governing professional guilds

Answers to the first 12 questions are below (highlight between the brackets):

[1. C, 2. A, 3. D, 4. B, 5. A, 6. C, 7. C, 8. B, 9. D, 10. D, 11. A, 12. B]

For further explanations, see page 45 of the linked PDF. So, how'd you do out of 12? Since I copied the answers down and then took the partial test, I doubtless prejudiced myself (even though I didn't try to memorize anything), and I don't trust my score here at all.