Though federal, state, and College Board subsidies pay all or part of their AP fee, currently $ 82 per exam, only 10 percent of last year's
AP examinees came from low - income families, according to the DOE.
Aside from its explosive growth, the most visible change during the program's first 50 years has been the transformation of the demographic profile of the typical
AP examinee.
In 1955, the typical
AP examinee was a boy; today, by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, she is a girl.
Not exact matches
And despite the vast expansion of the number of students taking
AP courses and exams, the average number of tests taken by students during their high - school careers has barely changed: 1.7
AP tests per
examinee in 1956 and 1.8 per
examinee in 2005.
And despite the popular media image of an
AP student as an overstressed overachiever from a high school in an upscale suburb,
examinees now come from a broad swath of U.S. high schools.