Free Response Help - FRQ/LEQ

The free-response section of the CompGov exam makes up 50% of your exam score. So, yeah, that means it's a good idea to do well on the FRQ section if you want to score well. Which, like, why wouldn't you? 🤔

Keep reading to learn how to ace the FRQ section!

FRQ Section Structure

You might be wondering what the FRQ section looks like, especially because every AP exam is slightly different. 🤮

The FRQ section of the CompGov exam has 4 questions, and each one of them is a different style of question. Here are the types of questions:

• 1 conceptual analysis question: In this question, you'll define or describe a political concept and explain and/or compare political systems, principles, institutions, processes, policies, or behaviors. Some parts may ask you to apply the concept to a course country.
• 1 quantitative analysis question: In this question, you'll analyze a visual stimulus and use it to explain a trend, pattern, similarity, or difference that you can connect to course concepts.
• 1 comparative analysis question: You'll compare political concepts, institutions, processes, policies, or behaviors across course countries and explain the significance of a similarity or difference.
• 1 argument essay: In this question, you'll make a defensible claim, support it with relevant evidence from one or more course countries, and explain your reasoning.

Each question may have a few different parts, but these are the four current FRQ types you should expect.

The AP Comparative Government FRQ section is 90 minutes long and contains 4 questions. Recommended timing: Question 1 (Conceptual Analysis) = 10 minutes, Question 2 (Quantitative Analysis) = 20 minutes, Question 3 (Comparative Analysis) = 20 minutes, and Question 4 (Argument Essay) = 40 minutes. Question 1 is worth 4 points; Questions 2, 3, and 4 are each worth 5 points.

A super helpful way to think about the FRQs is by the skill each one is really testing:

• Question 1 focuses on applying political concepts.
• Question 2 focuses primarily on data analysis.
• Question 3 focuses on comparing countries.
• Question 4 focuses on argumentation.

Also important: text-source analysis shows up in the multiple-choice section, not as its own FRQ task.

more resources to help you study

cheatsheetsscore calculatorkey terms

What each FRQ is really asking you to do

Question 1: Conceptual Analysis
You'll usually need to define or describe a concept accurately, then explain it in action and sometimes apply it to a specific course country or compare how it works in political systems.

Question 2: Quantitative Analysis
This question asks you to describe the data, identify a pattern/trend/similarity/difference, connect the data to a relevant course concept, and draw a conclusion using the data and your course knowledge.

Question 3: Comparative Analysis
This question asks you to compare political concepts, institutions, processes, policies, or behaviors across course countries and explain why a similarity or difference matters.

Question 4: Argument Essay
This question asks you to answer a political science question with a defensible thesis, relevant evidence, and clear reasoning.

Look at High-Scoring Examples

A good way to score well on the FRQ section is to know what the exam graders want from you.

What makes a good FRQ response? What will get you/lose you a point? 🤔 You can figure all of that out by looking at past student responses. Doing this will help you learn how pretty much game the system.

CollegeBoard actually releases the scoring guidelines for past FRQs, student samples, and how they scored, and the average scores for each FRQ. You can find all of that here.

Practice!

If you've played a sport 🏄🏽‍♀️ or ever had any kind of hobby, you know that you may not have all the skills to do well at first, but you get better at it with practice. FRQs work pretty much the same way: you need to practice writing them to get good at writing them.

The good thing is that you can access past exam FRQs. You can look at older FRQs for content practice, but prioritize the most recent College Board free-response questions because they best match the current four-question format (conceptual analysis, quantitative analysis, comparative analysis, and argument essay). Use older prompts mainly for extra content review, not for learning the exact current task structure.

Writing Games

I'll admit that practicing FRQs isn't my first choice of a fun activity to do. So, here are a couple of writing games you can do to make practicing slightly less boring.

Popsicle Stick Essays

Get a bunch of popsicle sticks or slips of paper and put a bunch of different political concepts/institutions, important vocab words, and the required countries. Make sure that you separate these things by color (ex. make the countries blue, the vocab words purple...) so you can tell them apart.

Draw a country, an important vocab term, and a concept out of the jar. Then, write about them. Explain how that term exists in the country you drew and what it means.

🚨 This exercise will help you know what gaps you have in your CompGov knowledge and allow you to practice writing about the concepts you're learning.

Snowball FRQs

Have a few friends or classmates make up their CompGov FRQ prompts. This will work better if they're also taking the class or have taken it in the past (because they'll hopefully know what they're talking about 😂).

Then, ball up your piece of paper and throw your snowball across the room (or at a friend 😉). Everyone should pick up a snowball for themselves and reply to the prompt they picked up.

If you want, you can have another mini snowball fight and have different people grade the responses. Make sure everyone writes their name on their response, so they can feedback on what they wrote.

Past Prompts

If you run out of recent prompts to practice with, you can still use older FRQs for extra content review. Just remember that older prompts may not match the current format exactly.

You can also change up how prompts are structured for extra practice.

Just choose a prompt, and draw a different country out of a hat 🎩. Then, respond to the prompt as if it's about the country you drew.

Closing Thoughts

Half of your CompGov score consists of the FRQs you write, so knowing how to do well in this section will help you ace the exam. Connecting the course content to the short answers you have to write may be a bit difficult at first, but you'll get the hang of it with some practice.