The AP Essay Rubrics
There are three types of essays that you have to write for the AP exam. This counts 50% of your grade. So for all of those writers out there: rejoice! If not, then here are the "cheat sheets". Mr. DeMott will explain how these rubrics can and most likely will save your lives! If not by now, he'll state that you don't need to be a historian to pass the exam. All you need is to know how to play the game. So, here are the rules!
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There are three types of essays like I mentioned before. There is DBG (Document-based questions), Comparison, and Change & Continuity. Generally speaking, DBQ is the easiest essay to write while the other two depends on the knowledge of history. You'll come to learn what I mean in the next paragraph. Anyway, each essay has maximum points of 7. If you managed to get a perfect score, you may achieve the extra two points if you excel the requirements in the rubric. So whenever you write an essay, it's important that you give EVERYTHING that you got. DON'T STOP WRITING! Write until your hands hurt!
Comparison Essay
Well, this is pretty self explanatory. This essay requires you to compare two ideas, concepts, people, etc and use history as support. So, depending on the question, it is crucial to know a little bit of history to help get you by. Here is the simplified rubric Mr. DeMott has probably already given you. If you don't know the terminology, go down to the last section:
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
DirectC (1)
AP? (2)
AnalyR (1)
Extra (2)
ACCT means Acceptable Thesis.
EVID means Evidence.
DirectC means Direct Comparison.
AP? means All Parts of Question.
AnalyR means Analyze Reason.
Extra is extra.
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
DirectC (1)
AP? (2)
AnalyR (1)
Extra (2)
ACCT means Acceptable Thesis.
EVID means Evidence.
DirectC means Direct Comparison.
AP? means All Parts of Question.
AnalyR means Analyze Reason.
Extra is extra.
Change & Continuity Essay
Change & Continuity is an essay requiring you to ANALYZE the change and continuity of events that go on in history, with of course, the support of historical knowledge. Again, another vital element is the knowledge of history to support your essay. Here is the simplified rubric Mr. DeMott has probably already given you. If you don't know the terminology, go down to the last section:
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
C/C (2)
WHC (1)
AnalyP (1)
Extra (2)
ACCT means Acceptable Thesis.
EVID means Evidence.
C/C means Change/Continuity.
WHC means World Historical Context.
AnalyP means Analyze Progress.
Extra is extra.
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
C/C (2)
WHC (1)
AnalyP (1)
Extra (2)
ACCT means Acceptable Thesis.
EVID means Evidence.
C/C means Change/Continuity.
WHC means World Historical Context.
AnalyP means Analyze Progress.
Extra is extra.
DBQ (Document-based Questions) Essay
This essay is practically your essay to the rescue. If you follow the rubric correctly, you are basically guaranteed a perfect score on your DBQ. You don't need ANY knowledge of history, if I can say that. The reason for this being is that they provide you documents TO USE for your ESSAY. Your documents serve as YOUR EVIDENCE to answer the essay question. Of course, it's always nice to support your own historical evidence but technically, all of the evidence is provided by the documents they give you. So this one is an easy win. That's why people love DBQ essay questions. Again, here are the simplified rubric for your DBQ (which is slightly different than the previous two that were introduced earlier). If you don't know the terminology, go down to the last section:
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
POV (1)
GR (1)
AllDoc (1)
MDoc (1)
Extra (2)
Thesis and evidence are present in every essay rubric but of course, we have some new ones:
POV means Point of View.
GR means Grouping.
AllDoc means All Documents.
MDoc means Missing Document.
And of course, extra is extra.
ACCT (1)
EVID (2)
POV (1)
GR (1)
AllDoc (1)
MDoc (1)
Extra (2)
Thesis and evidence are present in every essay rubric but of course, we have some new ones:
POV means Point of View.
GR means Grouping.
AllDoc means All Documents.
MDoc means Missing Document.
And of course, extra is extra.
THE TERMINGOLOGY: What does it mean?
Thesis: I can't stress this enough. The thesis is the vital heart of your essay! Without it, you won't have much luck on getting a good score on your essay. I have noticed that people have problems on creating a thesis. Well, to make it short and simple: thesis is your topic sentence or main idea you're presenting in your essay. Then you add support with historical evidence to back up your thesis statement. For example, a thesis statement might be: "The best rulers in history come from military leaders." Then, you would have to use actual historical evidence to back up your thesis statement.
Evidence: Evidence is historical facts that can help support your thesis statement. For example, let's use the thesis statement mentioned above: "The best rulers in history come from military leaders." You can support this statement by saying, "Pericles was a military general who rose as a leader in Athens and bought the Golden Age in Greece." And of course, if you know well about this subject, you can go on explaining how this strongly supports your thesis.
Direct Comparison: You have to be as obvious with this statement as possible. Direction comparison is just as it states. For example, a direct comparison sentence can look like this: "Christianity was more accepted in the lower social class than the noble class." or maybe something like this: "Akbar the Great was a more tolerant ruler than Elizabeth I because...blah blah blah." Just as simple as that. Comparison. BE OBVIOUS.
All Parts of Question: This is basically saying you have to address all parts of the question. For example, an essay question may be: "Describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa from 1450 to present day." If you just describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa, you would have missed one part of the question: it ALSO asked a specific time frame: from 1450 to present day. If you fail to address any portion of the question, you will jeapardize a good score!
Analyze Reason: For all of those rational people out there, this is your cup of tea. Basically, in order to analyze reasons in our essay, you only have to answer one question: Why? Why am I right about my thesis statement? For instance, with that thesis statement mentioned above: "The best rulers come from military leaders", you would simply have to explain why that's the case and poof! You got your analyzing reason!
Change/Continutiy: In your change & continuity question, you have to explain the changes throughout history AS WELL AS what had stayed the same. Using the sample essay question mentioned earlier: "Describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa from 1450 to present day", you have to explain the changes in the trading system in Africa AS WELL AS what stayed the same in the trading system. The more changes and continuities you explain in your essay, the better!
World Historical Context: Mr. DeMott will emphasize this through your AP World career! World Historical Context is simple TIME and PLACE. YOU MUST PRESENT TIME AND PLACE IN YOUR ESSAY as your historical evidence. You all are probably freaking out, thinking: "I have to know dates!???" No silly goose! It's nice to know specific dates but there's a way to get by it. If you know that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue around the late 1400s, you can say late 1400s and that will be your time. The place would obviously be the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. So basically, you can be vague about your time: you can say "early 20th century", "late millenia", "around the turn of the 16th century", whatever! As long as you show some knowledge of time and place. If you don't know where the Frankish kingdom is but you know that it's located in western Europe, you can say that! It doesn't matter! At least you have some idea.
Analyze Progress: In change & continuity, you have to analyze over a certain time frame given in the essay question. To address this rubric, it's helpful to use TRANSITIONAL PHRASES. You know, words like "Afterwards, later on, first, second, earlier, then, next, etc" are helpful to show progression overtime. Simple as that. And of course, be obvious! Show that you're analyzing progression! This rubric goes hand in hand with the Change/Continuity rubric.
Point of View: For the DBQ essay, you have to address different point of views from the documents. Each document present a certain point of view, presenting biased information. Whatever the question may be, point of view is important to show how different people viewed a certain event. For example, the crusades is a religious war but a king's report on the crusades may be totally different from a religious Priest's report on the crusades. The purpose of point of view is to support your essay for your DBQ.
Grouping: Grouping is a little difficult to explain, but you have to group the documents given to you in certain categories. Sometimes they give you 10-12 documents and then you have to divide it up into categories. Let's say the question deals with slavery. You can say one group of documents deal with slavery's point of view, and then these group of documents deal with pros and cons of slavery, blah blah blah. Again, you have to be obvious that you're grouping these documents. That's why we have paragraphs! Each paragraph will explain each group. Paragraph one deals with group one, paragraph two deals with group two, etc.
All Documents: This is easy! Simply address all of the documents that is given to you. You don't summarize all of them. Let's say we have 10 documents in total; you can simple say: Doc. 1,2,3 deal with blah blah blah. Doc. 4,5,6 deal with blah blah blah. And Doc. 7,8,9,10 deal with blah blah blah. And that's it! As long as you MENTION the document, you're good to go! However, there are some documents that you may need to go into detail depending on how you're going to support your essay.
Missing Document: For the DBQ, after you write your essay and supported your thesis statement and all of that good stuff, you then need to suggest a document that would be useful to use to answer the essay question. Let's say that the question dealt with Christianity and the documents only had Christian points of view. Maybe you might say, "An interesing document to add would be a Muslim document because it'll address a Muslim point of view and blah blah blah." Give a reasonable missing document that may be effective in addressing the essay question and you must explain why!
Evidence: Evidence is historical facts that can help support your thesis statement. For example, let's use the thesis statement mentioned above: "The best rulers in history come from military leaders." You can support this statement by saying, "Pericles was a military general who rose as a leader in Athens and bought the Golden Age in Greece." And of course, if you know well about this subject, you can go on explaining how this strongly supports your thesis.
Direct Comparison: You have to be as obvious with this statement as possible. Direction comparison is just as it states. For example, a direct comparison sentence can look like this: "Christianity was more accepted in the lower social class than the noble class." or maybe something like this: "Akbar the Great was a more tolerant ruler than Elizabeth I because...blah blah blah." Just as simple as that. Comparison. BE OBVIOUS.
All Parts of Question: This is basically saying you have to address all parts of the question. For example, an essay question may be: "Describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa from 1450 to present day." If you just describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa, you would have missed one part of the question: it ALSO asked a specific time frame: from 1450 to present day. If you fail to address any portion of the question, you will jeapardize a good score!
Analyze Reason: For all of those rational people out there, this is your cup of tea. Basically, in order to analyze reasons in our essay, you only have to answer one question: Why? Why am I right about my thesis statement? For instance, with that thesis statement mentioned above: "The best rulers come from military leaders", you would simply have to explain why that's the case and poof! You got your analyzing reason!
Change/Continutiy: In your change & continuity question, you have to explain the changes throughout history AS WELL AS what had stayed the same. Using the sample essay question mentioned earlier: "Describe the change and continuity of trading systems in Africa from 1450 to present day", you have to explain the changes in the trading system in Africa AS WELL AS what stayed the same in the trading system. The more changes and continuities you explain in your essay, the better!
World Historical Context: Mr. DeMott will emphasize this through your AP World career! World Historical Context is simple TIME and PLACE. YOU MUST PRESENT TIME AND PLACE IN YOUR ESSAY as your historical evidence. You all are probably freaking out, thinking: "I have to know dates!???" No silly goose! It's nice to know specific dates but there's a way to get by it. If you know that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue around the late 1400s, you can say late 1400s and that will be your time. The place would obviously be the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. So basically, you can be vague about your time: you can say "early 20th century", "late millenia", "around the turn of the 16th century", whatever! As long as you show some knowledge of time and place. If you don't know where the Frankish kingdom is but you know that it's located in western Europe, you can say that! It doesn't matter! At least you have some idea.
Analyze Progress: In change & continuity, you have to analyze over a certain time frame given in the essay question. To address this rubric, it's helpful to use TRANSITIONAL PHRASES. You know, words like "Afterwards, later on, first, second, earlier, then, next, etc" are helpful to show progression overtime. Simple as that. And of course, be obvious! Show that you're analyzing progression! This rubric goes hand in hand with the Change/Continuity rubric.
Point of View: For the DBQ essay, you have to address different point of views from the documents. Each document present a certain point of view, presenting biased information. Whatever the question may be, point of view is important to show how different people viewed a certain event. For example, the crusades is a religious war but a king's report on the crusades may be totally different from a religious Priest's report on the crusades. The purpose of point of view is to support your essay for your DBQ.
Grouping: Grouping is a little difficult to explain, but you have to group the documents given to you in certain categories. Sometimes they give you 10-12 documents and then you have to divide it up into categories. Let's say the question deals with slavery. You can say one group of documents deal with slavery's point of view, and then these group of documents deal with pros and cons of slavery, blah blah blah. Again, you have to be obvious that you're grouping these documents. That's why we have paragraphs! Each paragraph will explain each group. Paragraph one deals with group one, paragraph two deals with group two, etc.
All Documents: This is easy! Simply address all of the documents that is given to you. You don't summarize all of them. Let's say we have 10 documents in total; you can simple say: Doc. 1,2,3 deal with blah blah blah. Doc. 4,5,6 deal with blah blah blah. And Doc. 7,8,9,10 deal with blah blah blah. And that's it! As long as you MENTION the document, you're good to go! However, there are some documents that you may need to go into detail depending on how you're going to support your essay.
Missing Document: For the DBQ, after you write your essay and supported your thesis statement and all of that good stuff, you then need to suggest a document that would be useful to use to answer the essay question. Let's say that the question dealt with Christianity and the documents only had Christian points of view. Maybe you might say, "An interesing document to add would be a Muslim document because it'll address a Muslim point of view and blah blah blah." Give a reasonable missing document that may be effective in addressing the essay question and you must explain why!
