Required Knowledge from the AP World History Framework

The AP World History: Modern exam has rules and boundaries that are explained in published documents, particularly the Course Framework and Exam Description. The “Required Knowledge” lessons in this course are intended to help you understand the core, required content included in the AP World History exam. The College Board, the makers of all Advanced Placement exams, has recently strictly limited the content of their exams to the concepts, information, and even the words contained in the course framework documents. If an idea or fact is not contained in the course framework, student test takers cannot be required to know it. Students are free to bring additional knowledge to the examination, especially in the context of their free-response essays. But such additional knowledge is not required to correctly respond to any of the prompts in any of the AP exams. Therefore, we will focus our attention in this section on the terms and ideas in the course framework.