AP CSP 2027: Create Task Deadline and Exam Guide

There is a deadline in AP CSP 2027 that decides part of your score two weeks before you sit the exam, and students miss it every year. The Create performance task must be submitted as final in the AP Digital Portfolio by 30 April 2027 at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. The written examination follows on Friday 14 May 2027. Miss the April deadline and you lose those marks outright, with no guarantee of an extension.

The two dates that matter

The second row is the one that surprises people. The Personalized Project Reference is not merely coursework to be graded: it is a document you are allowed to consult during the written examination when answering the questions about your own program. If you have not submitted it as final by 30 April, you walk into the exam hall without the reference you were entitled to bring.

What "submitted as final" actually requires

Three components go into the AP Digital Portfolio: your Program Code, your Video, and your Personalized Project Reference. Uploading them is not the same as submitting them. Each component must be individually marked as final, and each requires you to attest to the originality of your work separately.

College Board advises allowing at least thirty minutes for the submission process, because every component has to be opened and attested to in turn. Students who start at eleven at night on 30 April, assuming it is a single upload button, are the ones who miss it. Do the submission in April with days to spare, not on the deadline.

Teachers are advised to set interim deadlines ahead of the College Board one, and if your teacher has done so, treat theirs as the real date. The official FAQ is explicit that an extension beyond 30 April is not guaranteed.

How the AP CSP 2027 assessment splits

The course is assessed in two parts, which is unusual among AP subjects and is why the April deadline exists at all. The Create performance task is work you develop during the year: a program of your own design, a video demonstrating it running, and the written reference describing it. The end-of-course written examination on 14 May then includes questions that refer directly back to your own program.

That linkage is the structural insight worth internalising early. The program you choose to build in October determines how easy the written questions are in May. A project with a clear list or collection, a well-defined procedure with a parameter, and genuine selection and iteration gives you straightforward material for the written responses. A thin project leaves you with little to write about under time pressure.

So choose the project for what it lets you explain, not for how impressive it looks. A simple program with a clean algorithm and an obvious data structure is worth more in this examination than an ambitious one that works by accident.

Where students actually lose marks

The commonest loss in the performance task is a program with no meaningful abstraction: code that runs but contains no student-developed procedure with a parameter that actually affects the result. The rubric rewards a procedure you wrote, that takes an argument, and whose argument changes what happens. Many submitted programs have a procedure in name only.

The second common loss is in the written responses, where students describe what their code does rather than why it is structured that way. The questions ask about purpose, about the role of a data abstraction, about how iteration serves the algorithm. A description of mechanics answers a question that was not asked.

The third is video technique, which costs nothing to fix: the video must show the program running, including input and the resulting output, within the stated time limit and without narration requirements being overlooked. Students lose marks for demonstrating the wrong thing, not for building the wrong program.

A plan from October to the deadline

From mid-October you have roughly twenty-eight weeks to the April deadline. Spend October and November choosing and building the program, deliberately engineering it to contain a list, a student-developed procedure with a parameter, and clear selection and iteration. Use December and January to write and revise the Personalized Project Reference while the code is fresh. February and March belong to the written examination: past multiple-choice questions, and practice at answering written prompts about your own program. Submit everything in the first half of April.

Note that College Board has announced an updated AP CSP course framework beginning in the 2027-28 school year. If you are sitting in May 2027 the structure described here applies to you, but students starting the course in the autumn of 2027 should check for the revised framework rather than assuming continuity.

Our AP Computer Science Principles tutoring works through the performance task and the written paper together, since the two are linked. Students deciding between the two computer science APs should read our comparison of AP Computer Science A and Principles, and those wanting the Java-based course can see AP Computer Science A tutoring.

What to do this week

Put 30 April 2027 in a calendar now with a reminder two weeks earlier, and ask your teacher whether they have set an interim deadline. If you have not yet chosen your program, choose one this month and check it against the rubric requirements rather than against how interesting it is. Then open the AP Digital Portfolio and look at the submission interface before you need it, so the thirty-minute attestation process is familiar rather than a surprise in April.