Two new College Board courses, AP Cybersecurity and AP Business with Personal Finance, launched nationwide in fall 2026, and their first exams take place on May 4 and May 5, 2027. According to the 2026-27 course catalogs of the five Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) high schools compiled on this site, only University High School currently offers AP Cybersecurity, open to grades 10 through 12; AP Business with Personal Finance does not yet appear in any of the five catalogs. Both courses belong to the College Board AP Career Kickstart series, and neither is listed yet on the University of California AP credit table, a point families should weigh when choosing courses.

Where AP Cybersecurity and AP Business with Personal Finance Come From

College Board and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced on September 18, 2025 that the two AP Career Kickstart courses, after classroom field testing, would launch nationwide in fall 2026; at that time 13 states had approved them, and industry advisors included CompTIA, Oracle, IBM, U.S. Bank, and Sephora. On May 28, 2026 the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) endorsed AP Business with Personal Finance, and College Board stated in the same release that students who complete the course are eligible for college credit and an employer-endorsed credential.

Item AP Cybersecurity AP Business with Personal Finance
College equivalent Introductory first-year college cybersecurity course Introductory college business course
Units 5 units: Introduction to Security; Securing Physical Spaces; Securing Networks; Securing Devices; Securing Applications and Data 6 parts: Businesses, Competition, and New Ideas; Marketing; Personal Saving and Borrowing; Business Finance and Accounting; Management and Strategy; Personal Goals, Budgeting, and Investing
Recommended prerequisites None None
2027 exam date Wednesday, May 5, Session 1 Tuesday, May 4, Session 1
Format Fully digital in Bluebook Fully digital in Bluebook; calculators permitted

AP Cybersecurity Exam Format: 60 Multiple-Choice Questions and One Free-Response Task

The AP Cybersecurity Exam has two sections. Section I has 60 multiple-choice questions in 80 minutes, worth 70% of the score; questions appear individually and in sets of 2 to 4, and students analyze scenarios and digital evidence to identify vulnerabilities, recommend mitigations, and detect threats. Section II has 1 free-response question in 50 minutes, worth 30%: students receive several sources from the same device, including firewall rules, system and application logs, a list of files with permissions, and a device policy, and must explain parts of the policy, find signs of attacks in the logs, configure file permissions and firewall rules, and propose ways to harden the device. The College Board course page states that the three skill categories, analyzing risk, mitigating risk, and detecting attacks, each account for 25% to 40% of the exam.

AP Business with Personal Finance Exam Format: 60% Multiple Choice, 40% Free Response in Three Parts

Section I of the AP Business with Personal Finance Exam has 60 multiple-choice questions in 70 minutes, worth 60%; questions usually come in sets of 3 or 4 with stimulus material such as narrative summaries, data visualizations, financial statements, and job descriptions, and 20% to 25% of the questions assess personal finance. Section II has two parts: Part A is 1 question in 25 minutes, worth 15%, in which students validate their in-class Business Canvas Project by pitching the product idea, explaining how they used hypothesis testing, and discussing a common entrepreneurial challenge; Part B is 3 questions in 65 minutes, worth 25%, covering a household’s financial data, a business’s data, and a decision between two alternative courses of action.

Units 1 through 4 are assessed on the exam and must be taught before May; Unit 6, Personal Goals, Budgeting, and Investing, is assessed through the Financial Advisor Project rather than the multiple-choice section, so schools may teach it after the exam. The AP Students page gives the multiple-choice weighting as 20% to 30% for businesses and competition, 20% to 30% for marketing, 25% to 35% for personal saving and borrowing combined with business finance and accounting, and 15% to 20% for management and strategy.

College Credit: The University of California AP Credit Table Does Not Yet List Either Course

Both College Board course pages state that colleges are working with the AP Program to establish credit policies and that the first set of institutions granting credit will be released in spring 2027. The current AP credit table on the University of California admissions site lists every creditable exam from African American Studies to Statistics, and neither Cybersecurity nor Business with Personal Finance appears; the same page states that AP scores lower than 3 will not adversely affect the chances for admission. Students taking either course in 2026-27 therefore do not yet know which colleges will grant credit; what is certain is the AP designation and the school’s weighting.

Availability in the Five Irvine High Schools: University High School Offers AP Cybersecurity in Grades 10 to 12

The University High School Course of Study 2026-2027 (Version 4, September 15, 2026) lists AP Cybersecurity under mathematics: grades 10 through 12, a yearlong course, 5 credits per semester, with a prerequisite of better than B- in Math I or at least C- in any higher math course, UC A-G category d (laboratory science), and marked as a weighted course. The prerequisite is the same as for AP Computer Science Principles, and the course description calls it a broad introduction aligned with a first-year college course. The University High School AP page lists the prerequisites for every AP course at the school.

The 2026-27 catalogs compiled on this site for Northwood High School, Portola High School, Woodbridge High School, and Irvine High School do not include either course. AP Business with Personal Finance has not yet appeared in any of the five Irvine catalogs, so a student who wants it must wait for a school to add it next year or complete the course outside school and register as a self-study candidate, as explained in How to Take an AP Exam Your School Does Not Offer.

EDUBUS Advice on the Two New AP Courses

Treat AP Cybersecurity as a second computing AP, not a substitute. University High School places AP Cybersecurity and AP Computer Science Principles under the same prerequisite, and neither requires programming experience. For students planning to apply to computer-related majors, AP Computer Science A remains the programming course colleges recognize most; AP Cybersecurity works better as a supplement that shows interest in information security. The overall AP plan is covered in the AP Course Overview.

Leave the credit question until spring 2027. The first list of credit-granting institutions will not be published until spring 2027, and the University of California AP credit table does not yet include either course. Students enrolled this year should choose the course for its content and for the weighting on the transcript, not for expected college credit.

The exam ordering deadline still applies. Students taking either course at school in 2026-27 must register by their school’s AP ordering deadline; the College Board national deadline is November 13, as explained in AP Exam Ordering Closes November 13.

Tenth graders should check their math progress first. The University High School prerequisite depends on the Math I grade, which students on the accelerated math pathway meet by grade 10. The AP offerings and entry conditions at each Irvine school are in the Irvine High School Admissions Guide.

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