The Soaring Number of African-American Advanced Placement Test Takers

More than 73,000 African-American members of the 2010 high school graduating class took an Advanced Placement test during their high school career. This is 16.5 percent of all black high school graduates in 2010.

Just five years earlier in 2005, there were only 38,000 black members of the high school graduating class who had taken an AP examination. Only slightly more than 10 percent of the black graduating seniors in 2005 had taken an AP test.

Because many students take multiple AP examinations over the course of their high school careers, the total number of AP tests taken by black members of the high school class of 2010 was 173,016. This was 6.9 percent of all AP exams taken by the members of the 2010 graduating class.

Of the black seniors who took AP examinations during their high school careers, 63 percent were women. English language and English literature were the two most popular AP examinations taken by black seniors. U.S. history ranked third, followed by U.S. government and politics and psychology.

Copyright © 2011. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.