AP Test Takers by State
A total of 5.7 million AP exams were taken in 2024 by more than 3 million students.
AP test participation varied dramatically across states, both in absolute numbers and participation rates. Texas dominates with over 361,000 test takers—nearly matching California's 388,819 despite having a smaller population—achieving the highest participation rate at 1.17%.
Meanwhile, states like Kansas (9,966 test takers, 0.34%) and West Virginia (6,116 test takers, 0.35%) lag far behind. This three-fold difference in participation rates suggests significant disparities in access to college-level coursework that go beyond simple population size or state wealth.
Total AP Test Takers by Subject
This was a 10% jump in total exams from the previous year, which with the addition of new AP subjects complementing the program expansion.
Considering the breakdown of students by grade, 11th graders took the most exams overall.
But there are some exceptions - Human Geography became hugely popular with 10th graders (186,507 took it), which makes sense since it's often seen as a more accessible entry point into AP coursework.
The gender patterns are pretty telling too. In STEM subjects like Physics C and Computer Science A, male students significantly outnumber female students, while in English Literature and Psychology, female students dominate.
It's the kind of disparity that reflects broader cultural trends about who feels welcomed or encouraged in different academic areas, and shows that there is scope for inclusivity in these areas.
In terms of year on year growth in test takers, African American Studies, being relatively new, showed growth to about 10,000 test takers in 2024.
Art and Design 3-D jumped 22%, and Seminar grew by 29%.
Meanwhile, a few languages like German and Latin are actually seeing slight declines, which probably reflects both demographic shifts and changing priorities in what students see as valuable for their futures.
If we take a look at the most popular individual subjects, English Language and Composition leads the pack, followed by U.S. History and World History.
But right behind them are Calculus AB, Statistics, and the various science courses - suggesting students are very much focused on building strong foundations in both humanities and STEM.
The Economics courses reveal something interesting about student priorities. Macroeconomics (160,741 students) significantly outpaces Microeconomics (103,809), which is curious since micro is typically considered more foundational.
This might reflect students gravitating toward the "big picture" economic concepts they hear about in news and politics rather than individual market behavior.
Computer Science also shows an interesting split - Computer Science Principles has 175,261 students while the more programming-intensive Computer Science A has only 98,136.
This suggests schools are successfully using CS Principles as a broader, more accessible entry point, but fewer students are making the jump to serious coding.
Yet another insight is from foreign language numbers- Spanish absolutely dominates with nearly 205,000 students across both courses, while Chinese (17,905) comes in second - probably reflecting both demographic changes and economic pragmatism about which languages matter globally.
Some other insights worth noting are on changes in AP credits by race:
- Black students: 137,482 credit-qualifying scores in 2024 (up 77% from 2014), averaging 2.3
- Latino students: 568,338 credit-qualifying scores in 2024 (up 112% from 2014), averaging 2.6
- Asian students: 702,863 credit-qualifying scores in 2024 (up 91% from 2014), averaging 3.6
- White students: 1,440,698 credit-qualifying scores in 2024 (up 16% from 2014), averaging 3.2
This is the end of this report. Thank you for using IGCSEPro.org.
