Free LEQ Grader: Instant AI Feedback on Your Essay
This is the essay-type hub for Long Essay Questions across APUSH, AP World, and AP Euro. Paste an LEQ draft and get a 6-point College Board rubric score — including whether you actually used comparison, causation, or continuity/change. Prefer course defaults? Open the matching History tool page below.
Grade your LEQ freeHow it works
Paste your LEQ draft
Include the thesis and body paragraphs from a timed practice LEQ. Name the reasoning skill you chose if it is not obvious from the prompt.
Score the 6-point LEQ rubric
FRQuick checks thesis, contextualization, evidence, and analysis/reasoning — the AP LEQ grader categories readers use every June.
Fix the reasoning chain
Most LEQ points are lost when facts never connect. Use the feedback to rewrite causal links or comparisons, then re-grade.
The 6-point College Board LEQ rubric
The LEQ drops the document points from the DBQ and rewards a historical reasoning skill across the whole essay. This AP LEQ grader AI scores that 6-point checklist directly. Course tools reuse the same checklist with course-specific defaults.
Total points: 6
- Thesis / claim0–1
- A historically defensible claim that sets up a line of reasoning for the chosen prompt.
- Contextualization0–1
- Situate the argument in a broader historical context beyond the prompt's immediate frame.
- Evidence0–2
- Provide specific historical evidence, then use it to support an argument rather than list facts.
- Analysis and reasoning0–2
- Structure the essay around comparison, causation, or continuity/change, plus complexity.
What this AI LEQ grader actually gives you
Every submission returns four things, each tied to a named row of the College Board LEQ rubric instead of a holistic impression.
A score out of 6, broken down by row
Thesis, contextualization, evidence, and analysis/reasoning are scored separately, so a 3/6 tells you which two rows to rewrite instead of leaving you to guess.
A reasoning-skill check
Whether comparison, causation, or continuity and change actually structures the essay, or whether it appears once in the thesis and is then dropped. That is the single most common way LEQs stall at 3.
Evidence used versus evidence listed
Which specific facts were connected to the argument and which were named and abandoned. The rubric's second evidence point turns entirely on that difference.
A revision list, ordered by points available
Ranked by rubric points recoverable, so a short revision block goes to the cheapest points first instead of sentence-level polish.
This is practice scoring, not an official score. FRQuick publishes its within-one-point agreement against human-graded AP History samples on the benchmarks page, and the score is a calibrated practice estimate — not a prediction of what an AP Reader will give you in May.
A worked LEQ example, scored row by row
A mid-range causation LEQ, scored the way the grader scores it. It reads fluently and contains correct history, and it still leaves three points on the table, the usual shape of a 3/6.
Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the Second World War changed the role of the federal government in the American economy in the period from 1939 to 1960.
World War II greatly expanded the role of the federal government in the American economy. During the New Deal, the government had already begun regulating the economy with programs like the WPA and Social Security. During the war, the War Production Board directed factories to build tanks and planes instead of consumer goods. Rationing was introduced for gasoline, sugar, and rubber. The government also sold war bonds to citizens to fund the war effort. After the war, the GI Bill gave veterans money for college and home loans. The federal budget was much larger in 1960 than it had been in 1939.
Scored 3 / 6
- Thesis / claim1 / 1
- "Greatly expanded the role of the federal government" is a defensible claim that answers the prompt. It would be stronger with a because-clause, but the rubric does not require one.
- Contextualization1 / 1
- The New Deal sentence does the job: it establishes the broader situation the war built on, before the prompt's window, and it is tied to the argument rather than dropped in.
- Evidence1 / 2
- Specific, accurate evidence is here: War Production Board, rationing, war bonds, the GI Bill. But it is a list. The second evidence point requires the facts to support the argument, and no sentence explains how the War Production Board's authority represents a change in what the federal government was allowed to do.
- Analysis and reasoning0 / 2
- This is a causation prompt and the essay never argues cause. Events are narrated in order, which is not the same thing. "The federal budget was larger in 1960" states an outcome without the mechanism. Nothing addresses the limits of the change either — the 1946 reconversion and the rollback of wartime controls — so the complexity point is out of reach too.
The one fix worth making first
Both missing points trace back to correct facts that are stated and then left sitting there. Adding a "which meant that" clause after each piece of evidence converts the same paragraph from 3/6 to 5/6 without researching a single new fact.
Grade your LEQ free to see the same breakdown on your own draft.
Match the reasoning skill your prompt is asking for
An otherwise solid LEQ loses the two analysis points, and it goes the same way almost every time. The prompt asks for one reasoning skill and the essay delivers narrative. Read the verb in the prompt first. It tells you which structure the rubric will be looking for, and it is the structure, not a keyword, that gets scored.
- Causation: "evaluate the extent to which X led to Y"
- The rubric wants a mechanism, not a sequence. Each body paragraph should name a cause and explain how it produced the effect. If your paragraphs are ordered by date instead of by cause, you are narrating.
- Comparison: "compare the X in two regions / periods"
- Both sides have to appear in the same paragraph, at least sometimes. An essay that spends paragraph one on one case and paragraph two on the other is two descriptions, and the rubric reads it that way. Similarities and differences both need to be argued, not just listed.
- Continuity and change over time: "evaluate the extent to which X changed"
- You need both halves. Essays that argue only change (or only continuity) cap out, because the prompt's "extent" is asking you to weigh one against the other across the full date range, including the end points.
The second analysis point, complexity, usually comes down to conceding the other side. An essay that argues major change and then names one thing that stayed the same, with evidence, is doing what that point rewards. A sentence beginning "however, this change was limited by…" is usually all it takes.
Supported LEQ exam variants
LEQ prompts differ by course, but the rubric does not. This hub owns the LEQ essay type; open a subject tool when you want course-first practice.
- APUSH LEQ (comparison, causation, or CCOT)
- AP World History LEQ
- AP European History LEQ
Prefer the course tool page? Open apush.