AP Macroeconomics FRQ: three questions, 20 points, 60 minutes.

The format at a glance

College Board publishes the shape of this section in detail: how many questions there are, what each one is worth, and how the points divide across four kinds of task. The equivalent figures for every other subject sit in our ap frq by subject hub.

The three AP Macroeconomics free-response questions

College Board numbers the questions and states what each is worth. It does not publish a fixed part-by-part split, so the descriptions below come from the two papers released for 2025 and show the shape these questions take rather than a rule they have to follow.

Question 1: the long question (10 points)

Half the section sits in this one question. It chains models together rather than testing them separately: the 2025 Set 1 version opened on the Phillips curve, short-run and long-run, moved through the foreign exchange market after a tariff, and finished on the balance of payments. College Board puts the 2025 average at 3.86 of its 10 points.

Question 2: the first short question (5 points)

Short means fewer points, not a narrower topic. The 2025 Set 1 version covered monetary policy under limited and ample reserves, the reserve market, and long-run self-adjustment, which is three topics in five points. It was the weakest question on both papers: College Board reports means of 1.51 of 5 in Set 1 and 1.38 in Set 2.

Question 3: the second short question (5 points)

Five points, and usually the question with arithmetic in it. In 2025 it asked for a comparison of real and nominal GDP, a calculation, an aggregate demand and aggregate supply diagram, and a spending multiplier. College Board reports a mean of 2.21 of 5.

What the macroeconomics free response covers

The models you need to be able to draw and reason with include aggregate demand and aggregate supply, the money market, loanable funds, the Phillips curve in both its short-run and long-run forms, and foreign exchange, with fiscal and monetary policy moving them. Add the reserve market under ample reserves, which is the model 2025 students handled worst and the one most study guides skip.

College Board assesses the same four economics skills here that it assesses on the multiple choice, with one exception. Skill Category 4, graphing and visuals, is not assessed in the multiple-choice section at all, because it requires drawing. Every graphing point available on this exam is a free-response point.

How the AP Macroeconomics FRQ is scored

AP Macro FRQ scoring is a checklist rather than an impression. Each point is a separate line, and a reader awards it or does not. College Board publishes how those points divide across four kinds of task, as a share of the whole free-response section:

So the graphs are worth a great deal, but they are not most of the section, and at the top of the published band they are only half of it.

What the graphs are worth and what students actually earn turn out to be different questions, and College Board answers the second one as well. Its 2025 report gives the share of responses earning each individual point. On Set 1 the aggregate demand and aggregate supply diagram was the best-earned point on the whole paper at 69%, and the short-run Phillips curve came next at 60%. The points asking for a mechanism went the other way: 23% for connecting construction spending to aggregate demand, 20% for explaining why selling a currency lowers its value, and 12% for the balance of payments identity. The reserve-market diagram landed with the explanations at 18%.

Read together, those figures say something more useful. A diagram you have drawn fifty times is the most reliable point on the paper. What costs students the section is drawing a model they have not drilled, and writing the outcome without the steps that produce it. Across both 2025 papers the average was 7.58 and 8.29 points out of 20.

Where students lose points

College Board names its own problem areas unit by unit, in the “Preparing for the AP Exam” notes in the course and exam description. These are the ones that reach the free-response section.

What exam day looks like

The exam is hybrid digital. Section I and the question text for Section II both appear in Bluebook on a screen, while your free-response answers go on paper, in a booklet that is handed in and scored by a reader. The whole thing runs 2 hours and 10 minutes, of which 70 belong to the 60 multiple-choice questions. In 2027 the exam falls on Friday, May 7, in the afternoon session, on College Board’s own calendar.

One thing College Board does not publish is a conversion table. There are no released cut scores for this exam, and the scores are not set against other students: every student who meets the criteria for a given score receives it.

How to practice the AP Macroeconomics FRQ

Work College Board’s released AP Macroeconomics free-response questions under a clock. Papers from 2023 onward match the current format, and each arrives with the scoring guidelines that list every point, so you can score your own answers against the same checklist a reader works from.

College Board also suggests how to spend the hour: the first 10 minutes reading and planning, then about 25 minutes on the long question and about 12 on each short one. That gives the long question a little over twice the time of a short one, which is what it is worth.

Then redraw diagrams until labeling is automatic, and practice saying the causal step out loud, because that sentence is where the 2025 data says the points are. When you have a raw score, the AP Macro score calculator turns it into a 1 to 5.