A day in the life: Monday-AP Spanish Language Exam, Tuesday-AP Calculus AB, Friday-AP U.S. History (Morning) and AP European History (Noon); will you be ready for AP Exam Hell Week? AP exams offer an opportunity to show colleges and universities what knowledge you have acquired in the span of a school year and can get you college credits if you score decently enough (you should check at one of your prospective college’s websites to see their credit policy to see if they will grant you credit for certain subjects). AP classes are supposed to be college-level classes that would give you a sense of what a college workload would be like for you. These classes offer higher-level learning in numerous subjects: History, English, Foreign Language, Math, and Sciences. So supposedly, if your school offers a wide variety of AP courses you can pick and choose which subjects you are interested in to dive deeper and enjoy a class of your choosing.
What?! Are you seriously telling me you don’t need a class to study for an AP exam?! Fine, suit yourself. However, keep in mind the resources you would need in order to do fairly well on the exam. Generally, what I have seen through the experiences of others (and a technique which I can attest to) is the process of simply buying or borrowing a study guide for the appropriate subject at hand. This technique is both cost effective (much cheaper than purchasing a textbook) and can be even cheaper if strictly self-studied (although hiring a tutor to clear up some things and give some extra material wouldn’t be a bad idea). Another idea could be to just buy or borrow a textbook for the corresponding course and study from that. This may or may not work for you, taking into consideration the following: brevity (little detail) or superfluous detail (too much detail), amount of practice material (to help you retain the learned information), and language of the textbook (textbooks tend to be both too simple and lacking, or too much and out of control!) Perhaps you can consider a tutor? Personal tutors or prep classes are, for many, an interesting and possibly very successful option for AP-level courses. These tutors tend to offer clarification of the information at hand in the very large study guides, epic textbooks, and provide extra practice to boot! However, you should be on the look out that you are not wasting your time with a tutor or classes and simply wasting money to be babysat for an hour or so and learning nothing.
So, now you understand the options that most students have to decide from, in order to prepare themselves for an AP exam. On the other hand, perhaps you are a newbie to the AP’s or maybe you would just like to see what I have to say, in terms of ideas for the AP-work-ethic. The discipline concerning self-studying can be a daunting game of gauging how much effort is necessary to do well on the test. For some, a subject may be very straight forward. For others, it may have its own twists and turns, which leave the student confused and confused even more again. For those that are confused, try again. Perseverance is an important concept for those that plan on self-studying for an AP exam. You need to keep on motivating yourself to study and understand what you will need for the AP exam (you want those crucial college credits!) Another important thing you will need is patience. Yes indeed, there WILL be times where you will just want to stop studying. At that time, you should take a short break and allow yourself to just calm down and prepare to continue on studying! To successfully self-study for an AP exam you need to find your desire to learn about the subject and keep on trying. The best results have been yielded from hard work and passion.
Aw, you resume-padders you. You all wanted me to post about the “easy and straightforward” AP subjects didn’t you? Well then, I guess I have some vultures to please now. More often agreed upon than not are the following subjects that are considered simple to self-study: AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, and AP Human Geography. However, I only have some experience with AP Psychology and I must warn you that no matter how “easy” a subject may seem, you will find no success if you put no effort into preparing yourself for the exam.
I hope all of you have enjoyed my ranting about the exams that may plague your lives for the next few years. If you have any questions at all about what I have discusses, feel free to message me.
