Before You Leave Home: Logistics and Setup
The AP Psychology exam is administered completely digitally inside the Bluebook testing application. Your goal on exam morning is to eliminate friction before the timer starts so your working memory stays dedicated to psychological concepts and research methods.
What to Bring and What to Leave
| Bring to the Testing Room | Leave at Home or in Your Bag (Switched Off) |
|---|---|
| Fully charged testing device (school-managed or personal laptop/tablet with Bluebook installed and updated) | Calculators of any kind (prohibited on AP Psychology; all statistics are hand-computable) |
| Charging cord/power cable (and adapter if needed) | Smartwatches, fitness trackers, and phones |
| Photo ID (school or government-issued; required if you test at a school you don’t attend) | Highlighters, colored pencils, or mechanical pencils (bring standard pencils/pens for scratch paper) |
| Your College Board username and password (you sign in to Bluebook on exam day, and a password saved on the device won’t work) | Study notes, flashcards, or reference sheets |
| 2–3 sharpened pencils or pens for scratch paper | Earplugs or headphones (unless pre-approved as an accommodation) |
| Snack and water (stored outside the testing area for the break) | Scratch paper (the proctor must provide all scratch paper) |
Check-In and Bluebook Mechanics
When you enter the room, you will complete check-in, receive official scratch paper from the proctor, sign in to Bluebook, and enter the start code once instructed.
Bluebook Tools to Use (and Ignore)
- The Timer: Displayed at the top of your screen. You can hide the minutes during the middle of a section if watching the clock triggers anxiety, but the timer automatically reappears and turns red when 5 minutes remain. The proctor gives no verbal time warnings.
- Option Eliminator: Crosses out choices (A–D) in Section I. Use this immediately whenever you rule out a distractor (e.g., crossing out causal wording on a correlational study question) so you do not reread dead options if you return to the item.
- Mark for Review: Flags a question on your navigation bar. Never leave a flagged question blank—always select your best educated guess before clicking Mark for Review.
- Highlight / Annotate (Section II): You can highlight text inside the AAQ and EBQ sources, but annotations and scratch-paper notes are never scored. Only text typed directly into the Bluebook response boxes earns credit.