How to Answer AP® Biology Free Response Questions | Albert Resources (2024)

The free response section can make or break any student’s AP® Biology exam score. If you’re wondering what the best tips and tricks for answering AP® Biology free response questions, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we extensively cover must know tips for writing effective AP® Biology FRQs, common mistakes made by students when analyzing past AP® Biology scoring guidelines, and how to use past AP® Biology free response questions to start practicing for your exam.

Read on to get the complete scoop when it comes to succeeding on your AP® Biology exam review.

5 Steps on How to Write Effective AP® Biology Free Responses

In this section, we’ll give you a strategy to start writing AP® Biology free responses that score you points.

1. Understand how points are awarded by reviewing the AP® Biology rubrics.

The first step to crafting good AP® Biology free responses that score you points is understanding how points are distributed. The easiest way to do this is by going to the College Board’s AP® Central website and navigating to their past released exams.

From here, you’ll want to open up the scoring guidelines — these will detail what points were awarded for different parts of AP® Biology free response questions.

Here’s a screenshot from the 2019 released exam:

Source: College Board

As you can see in this first section 1 (a), students receive two points, one for properly circling the transcription on the template pathway, and another point for properly identifying the molecule.

2. Underline or circle every bolded and capitalized word.

Source: College Board

One of the nice parts of the AP® Biology free response section is that the College Board draws attention to what they are asking you to answer. This means you need to make sure you answer it!

Bolded and capitalized words are often the easiest way to figure out the root of the question. Typically you can break down how much each question is worth from the bolded and capitalized words.

One of our best test taking tips is to make sure you check off or star next to the word after you’ve answered it in your free response. This serves as a visual checklist for you to make sure you answered all parts of the question.

3. Understand what the question is asking you and identify common AP® Biology directive words.

One of the easiest ways students get tripped up in their AP® Biology exam review is not actually answering the question that the test makers are asking. It’s a commonly cited piece of advice from the College Board readers.

Here are nine common AP® Biology question stems (directive words) to make sure you know cold:

• Calculate: This is where you’ll be asked to solve a problem. Two points are typically awarded for these parts, one for the right answer and one for showing your work.
• Compare: This is where you must outline similarities between two or more things. It’s important you specifically only outline similarities; don’t get this confused with contrast!
• Contrast: This is where you must show the differences between two or more things.
• Discuss: This is where you’ll want to outline pros and cons on a topic, process, theory or technique.
• Describe: This sort of question assesses your ability to characterize something; for example: the functions of a certain part of a cell.
• Explain: This is where you need to demonstrate your ability to make something understandable.
• Identify: This is where you will need to give a direct answer to the question. It’s usually closely related to reading a diagram or graphical representation.
• Interpret: This is where you need to analyze something critically or explain something that isn’t clear.
• Justify: This is where you must explain why something may happen. This is testing similar skills to interpret and explain.

Stems like calculate, explain, and justify are often associated with two-point problems.

Notice how some of these stems are open-ended. For example, discuss, describe, explain, and interpret are all generally pretty-open ended. Typically, this should clue you in that your answer should be thorough for this part of the problem. For example, if you’re asked to explain why a certain result may occur from an experiment — you would need to exhaustively cover the set up of the experiment, as well as what makes that particular experimental design an effective way to measure the dependent variable.

Make sure you do not make the mistake of only providing a single sentence answer when so many points are at stake!

AP® Biology students most often lose 5+ points when it comes to the first and second problems in the free response section. These are points you can’t get back, and can dramatically impact the way you score.

There are a handful of other common stems — be sure to review the past AP® Biology released exams to familiarize yourself with them.

4. Be succinct in your AP® Biology free responses.

This isn’t an AP® English Language free response essay. One of the most common mistakes AP® Biology students make when answering free response questions is thinking if they just write a lot, they can score more points. This is not true.

For example, if the question asked you to identify four properties of something and you list out nine, you will only get points for the first four you stated.

It is not the responsibility of your AP® reader to figure out what you meant. It is your responsibility as the AP® Biology test taker to communicate clearly through your writing.

A few principles to remember when writing your AP® Biology free responses:

1. Don’t restate the question. This is unnecessary and will not score you points.
2. Write in complete sentences.
3. If doing a calculation, make sure you clearly identify your final answer (this is most easily done by boxing your answer), AND show your work. A point is typically awarded for showing your work.
4. Once you answer the question, move on. One of the most common mistakes AP® Biology students make is by making a contradicting statement after they stated the right answer. If there is a contradicting statement made, you can lose out on points.
5. Remember the prior tip for graphing as well. If it asks you to plot, put the data points in the graph. If the question asks you to graph, draw a line or curve. Do not extend beyond the provided data unless you’re explicitly asked in the question to predict or extrapolate a result.
6. When graphing, make sure you follow graphing conventions. This means titling your chart, labeling your axes, scaling appropriately, and selecting the right type of graph.
7. Be mindful of your handwriting. While it’s not formally part of the grading process, if your AP® Reader cannot decipher your handwriting in the limited amount of time they have grading your exam, you are making it harder for them to give you points.

A final overarching principle is to make sure you practice completing your thoughts within a prompt. This has been called “closing the loop” and it is one of the most frequent mistakes students make here is when they’re asked for example to state the direction something is changing in the prompt, but then fail to do so.

5. Practice, practice, and then practice some more.

Mastering the AP® Biology free response section comes down to two things: understanding how the free response is graded, and then learning how to answer questions that fit those expectations.

Sometimes students do a great job of learning the rubrics, but don’t practice enough on actually writing sample responses or vice versa. When you’re starting your AP® Biology free response review, it’s helpful to first try out a past set of released questions, then grade yourself with the scoring guidelines.

See how long it took you to answer each question, how effective you were at answering the actual question posed, and where you missed out on points.

After a few times of doing this, you’ll begin to be more mindful of what the test makers are looking for in your responses.

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25 AP® Biology FRQ Tips to Scoring a 4 or 5

Now that we’ve covered how to write effective AP® Biology free responses, we’ll shift gears to cover some tips and tricks to maximizing your FRQ score.

1. When interpreting data, make sure you provide reasoning to support a claim. In recent years of exams, students have struggled in understanding the two-part nature of questions that ask to explain or justify something.
2. Interpreting and constructing models are different skills. It is not enough just to be able to create a phylogenetic tree. A student needs to understand what the model they construct actually says.
3. Practice applying fundamental knowledge of basic biology to giving an explanation for why you chose to present data in a certain way.
4. Be specific but with purpose! Sometimes students include unnecessary specificity that doesn’t actually answer what the question is asking. Provide your reasoning — don’t just repeat something given in the prompt.
5. Use “claim-evidence-reasoning”. This is where you break down an argument into these parts to make your point more clear.
6. When asked to make a comparison, make sure to answer the before and after state of the comparison.
7. When reviewing commonly tested topics such as the modeling of a cell signaling pathway, make sure you are able to describe each step of the pathway and anticipate what might happen if a particular step was activated or inhibited.
8. Practice reading multiple types of tables, then make sure you also practice creating your own tables with data. Remember the earlier tip to follow standard graphing conventions. Students have missed points in recent years for mistakes like forgetting to have units in their axes or missing labels.
9. Building on the prior tip, practice creating graphs from different sources of information — for example, you may have to draw a diagram from a narrative description. You should feel comfortable with creating different types of graphs like bar, dual Y axes, line, semi-log, etc.
10. Practice incorporating evidence from your own knowledge of biology — this can help in thoroughly answering questions that ask you to justify or interpret something.
11. Always be thinking about how to apply prior things you’ve learned to a new situation — the College Board is known for asking AP® Biology questions that cover something you’ve never directly learned before, but they are often questions that require you to apply one or two concepts you have previously had exposure to. This was a common mistake made by students in the 2019 exam on question 1 when students often missed points for not applying changes in molecular processes to ecological relationships.
12. Remember that natural selection has two notions: survival AND reproduction. This was a commonly missed point over the course of the last few years.
13. When answering experimental design questions, make sure you practice being specific in stating the change that may occur in an experiment. It’s not enough just to say that a change will occur. Make direct comparisons to the control group. When you fail to explain the different parts of an experiment and how it is designed, it makes it difficult for the reader to believe that you truly understand how to build a meaningful experiment.
14. Questions that test you on experimental design should always have a control, a variable to test in a few ways, a hypothesis, expected results, and clear graphs.
15. Know the difference between a dependent variable and an independent variable. There can be several independent variables but there can only be one dependent variable in a well-constructed experiment.
16. Remember that hypotheses (predictions) should compare the experimental group to a control group. It is not enough just to say something like “X will change” — it is better to say “X will change by being more Y” — notice how in this latter response, we’re being intentional and specific with directionality of the change.
17. If you don’t remember the exact name of a concept or how to spell it, try describing it or giving your best shot at spelling it. You can sometimes earn points for defining relevant terms.
18. Answer the AP® Biology free responses questions any way you’d like. All you need to do is make sure you’re making clear which question you are answering. Taking this approach is a common strategy for managing your time effectively.
19. Keep your opinion out of your free response answer. Your AP® Bio free responses should be backed by things you learned in class and actual science.
20. Wear a watch when practicing and taking the actual AP® Biology exam. You need to be familiar with how to pace yourself in different parts of the FRQs. It’s common sense, but longer questions deserve more time while shorter questions should take you less time.
21. If you’re given a parameter, follow it…when questions ask you to state something in a sentence or two, you should not write four sentences. Follow directions!
22. Make sure you explain terms when you use them — assume your grader knows little about AP® Biology.
23. Use a black or blue ink pen. Doing so makes it easier for your AP® Biology exam to be graded.
24. Try every question. One of the most common pieces of advice from AP® Biology teachers is to make sure you put something down for every question. You do not lose points for getting things wrong, but you miss out entirely on points for not answering a question at all.
25. Know your commonly tested diagrams cold. Concepts that often have related diagrams like cell signaling pathways, or Punnett squares are topics to make sure you understand when given different forms of information. For example, with Punnett squares you should be comfortable describing all outcomes in a variety of ways (such as in percentages and ratios, as phenotypes or genotypes). You should be comfortable creating Punnett squares when given information about the parent generation, or the F1 generation.

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Wrapping Things Up: How to Write AP® Biology FRQs

We’ve covered a lot of ground when it comes to answering AP® Biology free response questions. Here are a few key things to remember:

1. Know how AP® Biology FRQ points are rewarded.
2. Build the habit of identifying the sources of points in questions. Circle or underline these to figure out how valuable different parts of a question are.
3. Understand the question being asked — learn the directive words the College Board often uses and what they are asking for.
4. Master commonly tested skills such as experimental design and graphing (including interpretation of graphs).
5. Review commonly tested AP® Biology topics. Refer to the curriculum and exam description to see the percentage breakdown of different units.
6. Be specific and succinct in your responses. This is not an AP® English Language essay.
7. Try every question and be intentional in the order in which you answer each one. Tackle the questions you feel most confident in first.

We hope you’ve found this extensive guide helpful for your AP® Biology exam review. If you’d like additional free response or multiple choice practice, check out Albert for hundreds of original standards-aligned practice questions.

If you found this post helpful, you may also like our AP® Biology tips here or check out our AP® Biology score calculator here.

We also have an AP® Biology review guide here.

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