Looking for tips on how to prepare for the AP Macroeconomics Exam? You’ve come to the right place! This blog includes AP Macroeconomics test prep tips from Marks Education’s Ryan Blodgett.
Ryan has been a key part of our team since 2014, and tutors the most tests and subjects out of everyone at Marks. He’s helped students with starting scores in the top and bottom 1% and knows that while the AP Macroeconomics Exam is a challenging test, there are effective strategies that all students can use to improve.
Test Day: Friday, May 8th, 2026
Section I: Multiple Choice
60 questions | 1 hour and 10 minutes | 66% of exam score
Section II: Free Response
3 questions| 1 hour | 33% of exam score
Content Areas
Unit 1: Basic Economic Concepts: Weighted 5-10%
- Opportunity Cost and the Production Possibilities Curve
- Comparative average and gains from trade
- Scarcity
- Supply and Demand
- Market equilibrium, disequilibrium, and changes in equilibrium
Unit 2: Economic Indicators and the Business Cycle: Weighted 12-17%
- Business Cycles
- Unemployment
- The Circular Flow and GDP
- Real vs. Nominal GDP
Unit 3: National Income and Price Determination: Weighted 17-27%
- Short-run and long-run aggregate supply
- Aggregate Demand
- Supply Model
- Equilibrium and Changes in the Aggregate Demand-Aggregate Supply
- Fiscal Policy
Unit 4: Financial Sector: Weighted 18-23%
- Monetary Policy
- Financial Assets
- Definition, Measurement, and Functions of Money
- Banking and the Expansion of the Money Supply
Unit 5: Long-Run Consequences of Stabilization Policies: Weighted 20-30%
- Economic Growth, Crowding Out
- Government Deficits and National Debt
- The Phillips Curve
Unit 6: Open Economy– International Trade and Finance: Weighted 10-13%
- Real Interest Rates and International Capital Flows
- Changes in the Foreign Exchange Market and Net Reports
- Effects of changes in policies and economic conditions on the foreign exchange market
- Exchange rates and the foreign exchange market
- Balance of payments accounts
Tips from our team
Timing on Test Day
Many students don’t know that on the AP Macroeconomics exam, timing is actually your friend. When you’re working through the multiple-choice section, you have an hour and 10 minutes for 60 questions, and most of the questions don’t even require calculations. That means that, unlike other AP exams, you have over one minute per question, which in some cases, might be more than you need. This gives you time to check over your work and even re-read or re-attempt challenging questions.
As for the extended response questions, you get a full hour for just three questions, which means that not only will you have more time to think through what the question is asking and how you’ll respond, but for responses requiring graphs– because you’ll be drawing many– you’ll have time to overdo it. Our advice? Label everything! Even when you think that you don’t need to. It can’t hurt, and often, clarity wins points.
The Graphs
Graphing is one of the biggest hurdles students face when taking the AP Macroeconomics exam, but feeling confident in the graphs is often one of the most common ways students learn to raise their scores. Students often struggle because they didn’t take the time to memorize their graphs and learn their function, purpose, and labels, so they are left out in the rain on test day. Devoting some time to changing that today will put you in a better position on the day of the exam.
Another mistake students make during the test is not taking the time to fully draw out the graphs and instead try to figure it all out in their heads. You might think this saves you time, but there is a reason the test is so focused on graphs. Drawing them out makes numeric relationships that might not otherwise be obvious stand out, and helps make the unintuitive clear, and therefore, the question much easier to answer.
What to Memorize?
There are certainly formulas and concepts on the Macroeconomics Exam that you can reason your way through. However, there are also some formulas you just need to know if you’re hoping to be successful on the test.
For AP Macroeconomics, these are:
1. The different multipliers (spending multiplier, tax multiplier)
2. Marginal propensity ratios (margin propensity to save, marginal propensity to consume)
You should spend time reviewing and memorizing all of the graphs, content, and vocabulary from your class notes, but having an intense familiarity with these subject areas is important because they’re not the kind that can be easily figured out intuitively or through common sense. You need to know them forward, backwards, and sideways. There aren’t many but if you can get these down, your score is likely to improve.
When to Start Preparing
Your prep time largely depends on your current situation and how you fared as a student in the course. However, generally, we tend to recommend you start reviewing one to two months before the exam, depending on how well you did during the class. If you got a good grade and did well on your tests, maybe start with a content review a month before. If you’re someone who struggled in the class or it wasn’t AP-focused, we might recommend you start two months before the exam.
When you start can also depend on when the course was offered: some schools offer Macroeconomics as a full year course, but others might only offer it as a single-semester course that you might have taken in the fall. Again, the same recommendation as the previous paragraph applies, but might require a bit more nuance as it relates to how fresh the information is in your mind. You might need time to dig for the content and get back in the swing of things, and that’s great as long as you account for it!
For students currently in a spring semester iteration of the class, the timing for your plans might be trickier. You’ve only had two months of instruction before starting exam prep, so you’re trying to strike a delicate balance of learning current content while striving to get ahead. In this case, we recommend considering how your class follows the curriculum timeline and whether you’re on track to finish everything before the exam date. If not, you might want to start doing some independent content learning or consult with a tutor to give yourself time to study before the test.
Resources
At the end of the day, practice and dedicated study time are what make the biggest difference. For students looking for additional resources to study, we recommend checking out the College Board’s resources. They have decades of Free Response questions that you can use to practice and familiarize yourself with the format. Resources like Khan Academy and Princeton Review are also great to consider.
For more focused review recommendations, we recommend Jacob Clifford’s YouTube channel. He makes a great 30-minute review that is perfect for the night before the exam. It puts everything you’ve spent the year learning into one video that can give your memory that extra boost.
Looking for more personalized tutoring recommendations? Consider a FREE consultation with a Marks Education Tutor to discuss our 6-session AP Tutoring Packages. We create personalized study plans to target your specific needs. Contact us now to learn more or check out our team bios.