Advanced Placement (AP) American History Examination
Section I: Multiple Choice
You will have 2 minutes to complete Section I. If you encounter a question you are dumbfounded about, fool, skip it and come back later as there is a penalty to discourage haphazard guessing. Do not spend too much time on any one question. Once you have finished, you may stop and check your answers. DO NOT go on to Section II.
1. Who among the following was the LEAST dynamic in terms of personality, er, IS the LEAST dynamic- they’re all alive?
a. Strom Thurmond
b. Alan Greenspan
c. Pat Buchanan
d. Ben Stein
2. What event meant the dawn of industrialization in America?
a. The invention of the computer
b. The cotton gin
c. The Easy Bake Oven
d. The Whiskey Rebellion
3. How did the Pilgrims get to America?
a. On the Mayflower
b. On their good faith
c. On their hopes to escape religious oppression
d. Unhappily as a fly in a clean room
4. Where was the “City on the Hill” to be located?
a. On a hill
b. Somewhere outside of Birmingham
c. Who the hell cares
d. Somewhere on the east coast
5. Which of the following BEST describes the cause of the American Revolution?
a. The food was really bad and there were too many bugs
b. The British refused to bathe themselves
c. Something about taxes
d. Yoko Ono split up the Beatles, thus allowing for American music to flourish again
6. Who was responsible for the Hull House?
a. Jane Hull, Governor of Arizona
b. Some badass chicks from the Moulin Rouge
c. Satan, who hired a bad sign painter
d. A dead chick
7. What was the name of the plan that called for a bicameral legislature?
a. The Bicameral Plan
b. The New Jersey Plan
c. The Virginia Plan
d. The Connecticut Compromise
e. The Random Drunken Decision
8. What was the Boston Tea Party?
a. A bunch of wacky guys dumping tea into the ocean
b. A bunch of guys dressing up as Indians
c. A way to get back at the British A-Holes
d. A major cause of World War II
9. Which event did NOT contribute to a general greater cynicism in America?
a. The Monica Lewinsky affair
b. Watergate
c. The Vietnam War
d. Gee, I can’t think of a right answer for this one
10. What was a major cause of the Depression?
a. A chemical imbalance in the brain
b. World War I
c. The George W. Bush Administration
d. Clowns
STOP HERE. YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT DONE BUT IF YOU ARE SIT DOWN YOU LUCKY BASTARD. FOR THOSE OF YOU IDIOTS WHO AREN’T, THAT MEANS YOU BUSTER, DO NOT KEEP ANSWERING QUESTIONS, YOU STUPID MORONS WHO SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS STUFF IN THEIR SLEEP! PATHETIC! YOU ARE ALL THE @#$%ING WEAKEST LINKS! – Anne Robinson
Section II: Free Response
For Section II you will have approximately 3.44 minutes to write an essay the length of War and Peace, plus 2 more essays of your choice from a list provided to you. For this, you will be handsomely rewarded. With a score of a 2, that is. Get ready to BS your way through a topic you know nothing about, because it’s just a preview of all the BS’ing you’ll have to do on the way to getting your BS degree. It is suggested that you spend 3 minutes on the “Document Based Question” which will test your ability to research, analyze, interpret, write about, document the source of, and generally distort the meaning of, data; try to spend .2 minutes on the essays that follow.
Question 1
Historians have known for years that labor unions have been an important part of labor, which in turn has had a crazily important role in American History. Even today, there is evidence of the struggle for labor unions; however we will not give you any hints as to topics to write about in this introduction, you goon! Now we know their role has not been quite as dramatic as, say, the Vietnam War or the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or even as important as the KKK, but we still expect you to know about them. Thus, we will ask you to write a really long essay about them of about 60 to 90 paragraphs which you will struggle with, proving to us once and for all that all Americans are receiving a very shallow and ineffective historical education. Then we will be forced to curve the scores on this test, and you will still score only a 2. Use the following exhibits to defend and support the assertion that labor unions are the most important thing in American History.
Question 2
Nobody doubts that the 90’s were a time of sexual decadence. In fact, historians now believe that there has never been a sicker time in America. Write a well-crafted essay in which you connect the World War I politics of Woodrow Wilson to the advent of the movie Striptease, while touching on Watergate.
Question 3
The Sixties have been immortalized in Austin Powers movies as a time of general sexual decadence. Write a well-crafted essay in which you describe the kinds of sexual acts that were prevalent at the time, and touch on the music that was played in the background and the drugs that were taken to induce the unwilling partner.
Question 4
We really suggest you do the other two questions, but if you really want, or you’re really dumb, you can pick out three court cases from the 1800’s and summarize them, and then relate them to the women’s movement and Andrew Jackson at the same time. Whatever you do, do not mention Populism or the Wizard of Oz. In fact, do not mention them at all anywhere in this test.
STOP HERE. You may go back and review your writing if you would like, which we highly suggest, fool, because we put a lot of work into confusing you and we want you to use up every precious second.
