What is on the AP Statistics exam in 2027?

By Jude Wallis · Published August 11, 2026

The AP Statistics exam is 3 hours in two equal halves. Section I is 42 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes for 50% of the score; Section II is 4 free-response questions worth 10 points each in 90 minutes for the other 50%. Content comes from five units, first examined May 2027.

Section counts, timings, weightings, free-response question types, and course practices are the Fall 2026 AP Statistics exam format, first administered May 2027. The removals and the fully digital Bluebook delivery are stated on College Board's AP Statistics future revisions page.

Two sections, three hours, split 50/50

The redesigned AP Statistics exam, first sat in May 2027, has this shape:

Section	Questions	Time	Share of score
Section I: Multiple-choice	42	90 min	50%
Section II: Free-response	4	90 min	50%

The exam is fully digital, with all student responses submitted through the Bluebook testing app, a change College Board sets out on its AP Statistics future revisions page.

The two halves are worth the same, but they are not the same task. Section I is 42 questions in 90 minutes, which is a shade over two minutes each. Section II is four 10-point questions in the same 90 minutes, which is 22.5 minutes each, and every point of it is written prose you have to compose.

The content: five units and what each is worth

Content comes from five units, covering 55 topics. The percentages are each unit's share of the multiple-choice section, not of your overall grade.

Unit	Title	Weighting	Topics
1	Exploring One-Variable Data and Collecting Data	20-30%	13
2	Probability, Random Variables, and Probability Distributions	15-25%	12
3	Inference for Categorical Data: Proportions	15-25%	15
4	Inference for Quantitative Data: Means	10-20%	10
5	Regression Analysis	10-20%	5

Read top to bottom, that is a course that spends Unit 1 on describing data and collecting it well, Unit 2 on probability and the distributions that make inference possible, Units 3 and 4 on inference itself for proportions and then means, and Unit 5 on the relationship between two quantitative variables, which the redesign keeps as a descriptive and diagnostic unit rather than an inferential one.

The ranges are bands, not a fixed split. Their lower bounds add to 70% and their upper bounds to 120%, so no exam can sit at the top of all five at once. How many units are in AP Statistics has the class-period counts and the full topic breakdown.

The four free-response questions

Section II is fixed in shape and in order:

Question	Type	Points	Share
1	Multi-Focus on Practices 1 and 2	10	12.5%
2	Multi-Focus on Practices 3 and 4	10	12.5%
3	Inference (Hypothesis Test or Confidence Interval)	10	12.5%
4	Multi-Focus on Practices 2, 3, and 4	10	12.5%

Question 3 is always inference, either a hypothesis test or a confidence interval, so an eighth of the exam is known in advance. The other three are multi-focus questions named for the course practices they target.

The FRQ format for 2027 covers the section in detail, and the AP Statistics FRQ guide covers how to write answers that earn the points.

The four course practices

The exam is built around four course practices as well as around content, and the free-response questions are labeled by which ones they target.

Practice	Weighting
Practice 1: Formulate Questions	5-10%
Practice 2: Collect Data	20-30%
Practice 3: Analyze Data	25-35%
Practice 4: Interpret Results	25-35%

Analyzing data and interpreting results carry the two heaviest weightings. That is the framework saying that writing the conclusion in context is worth as much practice as the arithmetic, and it is why interpretation templates are worth rehearsing as carefully as formulas.

What is not on the exam any more

The Fall 2026 redesign cut content as well as regrouping it. College Board's future revisions page lists five removals, worked through one by one in what was removed from AP Statistics.

Two of the five have their own pages here: is the geometric distribution on the AP Statistics exam and is chi-square goodness of fit on the AP exam.

Two need a careful reading, because they bear on what the exam still covers. Removing the old Unit 9 does not remove regression: Unit 5 is Regression Analysis, covering scatterplots, correlation, linear models, residuals, and least-squares regression. What went is inference for the slope, the confidence intervals and tests built on a regression line. And the entry for analyzing departures from linearity was the old topic 2.9 on re-expressing data to straighten a curve, so the course now has no topic on transforming data to achieve linearity. Reading curvature in a residual plot as evidence a linear model is wrong is still assessed.

What nobody can tell you yet

There is no score distribution and no points-to-5 conversion for this exam. May 2027 is its first administration, so the data to describe one does not exist. Any curve you find online belongs to the previous exam, which had nine units and different content.

This is worth saying plainly because the gap gets filled with guesses. A conversion table for the old exam is not a conversion table for this one, and neither is a percentage from a review book printed before the redesign.

What is published in advance, and what this page is built from, is the structure: two sections, their question counts and timings, the five units and their weightings, the four practices, and the four free-response question types.

How to check any resource you use

Almost every AP Statistics resource online still describes the nine-unit course, which makes source-checking a real study skill for this cohort.

Three quick tells that a resource predates the redesign:

It lists nine units, or refers to Unit 6, 7, 8, or 9.
It teaches the chi-square goodness-of-fit test or the geometric distribution as examinable.
It includes a whole section on inference for the slope of a regression line.

Everything on this site is built on the current framework. Start with the exam format page for the full breakdown, the course hub for the unit-by-unit map, or how to study for AP Statistics if you want a plan rather than a specification.

Where your score actually comes from

Section I is 42 multiple-choice questions worth 50% of the exam, and Section II is 4 free-response questions worth 10 points each for the other 50%. Work out what one free-response point is worth, what one multiple-choice question is worth on average, and how the two compare.

Free-response points in total: $4 \times 10 = 40$ points, worth 50% of the exam.
Value of one free-response point: $50\% \div 40 = 1.25\%$ of the exam. Check it against the published per-question share: $10 \times 1.25\% = 12.5\%$ , which matches.
Average value of one multiple-choice question: $50\% \div 42 \approx 1.19\%$ of the exam.
Compare a whole free-response question with the multiple-choice section: $12.5\% \div (50\% \div 42) = 12.5 \times \frac{42}{50} = 10.5$ .
Read that back: one free-response question carries the same weight as 10.5 multiple-choice questions on average, and it is worth a quarter of the entire free-response section.

One free-response point is worth 1.25% of the exam and one multiple-choice question about 1.19% on average, so they are worth nearly the same. But a single free-response question equals 10.5 multiple-choice questions, which is why abandoning one costs far more than missing a handful of multiple-choice items.

Which units carry the most weight per topic

Work out how much multiple-choice weight each topic carries on average, and say which comparisons that actually settles.

Do not start from midpoints. The five midpoints are 25, 20, 20, 15, and 15, and those sum to $95\%$ , not $100\%$ . A midpoint is not a share of anything you can add up, so dividing one by a topic count gives a number that looks precise and is not.
Divide the actual range endpoints instead. Unit 5 is $10$ to $20\%$ across 5 topics, so $10 \div 5 = 2.00\%$ to $20 \div 5 = 4.00\%$ per topic.
Unit 3 is $15$ to $25\%$ across 15 topics: $1.00\%$ to $1.67\%$ per topic.
Unit 1 is $20$ to $30\%$ across 13 topics: $1.54\%$ to $2.31\%$ per topic.
Unit 2 is $15$ to $25\%$ across 12 topics ( $1.25\%$ to $2.08\%$ ), and Unit 4 is $10$ to $20\%$ across 10 topics ( $1.00\%$ to $2.00\%$ ).
Now compare bands, not points. Unit 5's floor of $2.00\%$ sits above Unit 3's ceiling of $1.67\%$ , so Unit 5 beats Unit 3 on every reading. That is the one ordering the CED guarantees.
Unit 5 against Unit 1 does not settle. Unit 5's floor is $2.00\%$ and Unit 1's ceiling is $2.31\%$ , so the bands overlap and either unit could lead depending on where the real weightings fall.

Per topic, Unit 5 (Regression Analysis) runs $2.00\%$ to $4.00\%$ of the multiple-choice section, against $1.00\%$ to $1.67\%$ for Unit 3. Those bands do not overlap, so Unit 5 topics outweigh Unit 3 topics under every reading. Unit 5 against Unit 1 ( $1.54\%$ to $2.31\%$ ) does overlap and is not settled. Unit 5 is still the one to protect: five topics, the fewest class periods, taught at the end of the year.

Frequently asked questions

What is on the AP Statistics exam?

Two sections in 3 hours. Section I is 42 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes for 50% of the score. Section II is 4 free-response questions worth 10 points each in 90 minutes for the other 50%. Content comes from five units.

How long is the AP Statistics exam?

3 hours, split evenly into two 90-minute sections. That works out to roughly two minutes per multiple-choice question and 22.5 minutes per free-response question.

How many multiple-choice questions are on the AP Statistics exam?

42, answered in 90 minutes and worth 50% of the exam score. Unit weightings, such as 20-30% for Unit 1, describe each unit's share of this section rather than of your overall grade.

Is the AP Statistics exam digital?

Yes. College Board's future revisions page states that the May 2027 exam moves to fully digital, with all student responses submitted through the Bluebook testing app. Practicing on paper and sitting on a screen are different tasks, so rehearse in the format you will meet.

What was removed from the AP Statistics exam?

Five entries, listed in full in what was removed from AP Statistics. Two need care. Regression stayed as Unit 5, so only slope inference went. And the course now has no topic on transforming data to straighten a curve, but reading curvature in a residual plot is still assessed.

What score do I need for a 5 on the new exam?

No conversion exists. May 2027 is the first administration of the redesigned exam, so there is no published score distribution or points-to-5 table for it. Any figure you find describes the previous nine-unit exam.