So this is my junior year and I’m wondering if anyone has any helpful tips for time management, studying, and how to get a 5 on all three exams. This year I’m taking AP Biology, AP English Language and Composition, and AP Us History. I know that these are tough courses but I really want to do well in them. Also if anyone has some tips on how to get started during the summer and what review books I should buy that would be great. Thank you
Hello,
I also took 3 AP classes my junior year (AP Chem, AP Lang, APUSH).
My suggestions:
- Study for your tests in advance
- Make study guides as you go along. You don’t want to be scrambling around the day before a test trying to figure out which notes are important and what formulas you actually need to know. Have everything organized ahead of time. This’ll also help when it comes time for the AP exams.
- Develop some effective de-stress activities. By the end of the year, I felt so burned-out that I barely even studied for the AP exams; I was just so tired. Make sure this doesn’t happen to you haha. Always be sure to take some time for yourself, whether it’s through meditation or journalling or bubble baths, etc. I do not recommend Netflix. At all. Do not use Netflix as your de-stress activity!! It will literally ruin your life as a student because you will not be able to stop watching. (Speaking from experience here…)
- Be careful. It’s just really easy to lose control when you’re taking 3 AP classes at once. Like when the AP Lang teacher decides to assign an in-class essay on the same day the AP Chem teacher and the APUSH teacher are having major tests. The best advice I can give is just make sure you’re keeping up with the material AS YOU’RE LEARNING IT. If you don’t understand something, don’t wait until the night before the test to try and learn it. And be sure to review your notes at least every other night.
This may sound like pretty basic advice, but trust me, it is so easy to forget to do these things. There were some months when I would be on top of everything, and I’d have my AP Chem study guides ready a whole week before the test. And then there were the times when I would be texting my friends at 2:00 a.m. like “i just watched a whole season of breaking bad, u think i’ll be good for the ap chem test today???”
When it comes to the actual AP exams…
As far is AP Lang is concerned, there’s not much actual studying you can do. You’ll have to rely on your teacher to prepare you throughout the school year. For example, my teacher would often give us essays and APMCs (the multiple choice section) to do during class. If this isn’t something your teacher does, you can find some past AP prompts and questions online. Go ahead and do those in your free time. Make sure you’re familiar with the different types of essays and feel comfortable writing each (esp. with the time pressure). Also, start keeping up with the news/current events if you don’t already! It really helps when it comes to thinking of examples for your essays.
APUSH was literally death, but I found the exam to be pleasantly less difficult than the class. Not exactly easy, but better than what I’d been going through during the school year. I definitely preferred WHAP over APUSH, but I liked the exam format of APUSH (the passages, as opposed to a typical multiple choice question). Again, if your teacher doesn’t give you practice essays throughout the year, consider doing those on your own time. Also, practice doing the short answer questions. You can find some online if your teacher doesn’t give you any.
And AP Chem… well, I sort of gave up. Everyone did, at my school. I had 2 prep books and didn’t even use them. Maybe it’s just my school, but I noticed the AP Bio kids seemed to be more put-together than us AP Chem kids. Most of the AP chem students sleepwalked into the exam with a doughnut in one hand and a single #2 pencil in the other. And then there were the AP Bio kids, with their prep books and freshly sharpened pencils ready to go. I can’t speak to the difficulty of AP Bio, however.
All of this makes me sound like a really terrible student lol, but I only started going downhill during the end of the school year. I crashed about a month before the exams. And that’s because I wasn’t doing a good job with that whole “de-stressing” thing. Still got all As though! (phew)
Anyways, even if you’re a motivated and dedicated student, be careful. I started out that way, and yet I still managed to lose control of my studying habits near the end. I noticed similar things happening to a lot of my friends as well. Be sure to keep the balance between studying and personal health.
I don’t think it’s necessary for you to start anything now, but if you feel the need, I’d recommend preparing for APUSH to start with. There’s a lot of great crash course videos out there, like getafive. They’re usually designed for people who have already taken the class, but should prove to be helpful regardless. I think they have AP Bio videos as well.
Best of luck!
Rising senior here. I took the same 3 AP classes my junior year that you’re planning to, except I didn’t take the APUSH exam yet because APUSH is separated into two, year long classes at my school. AP classes will differ from school to school, but the AP exam obviously won’t, so I’ll try to keep it general.
So first of all, my experience with my APUSH 1 class was pretty good. It was a hard class; there’s a lot of info and analyzing and things like that. My tests would always be multiple choice, which at first sounded easy but it can actually be super hard if you don’t pay careful attention. My teacher taught in a lecture style to make it feel like it was actually a college class, and I’d just take a bunch of notes as he talked (some people would even record the class–make sure that’s cool with your teacher if you try to do that). When it came time for tests, I would reread my notes and often type up a condensed version for myself. I liked to use humor/slang when retyping notes because it makes it entertaining for me honestly lmao. I also would recommend YouTube channels, particularly Crash Course and Adam Norris (I think he makes videos specifically for APUSH). I had the AMSCO review book, and we used the American Spirit primary source book for assignments, which could be a big help when it comes to the actual AP exam.
AP Bio…well, at my school, it was terrible lol. My teacher did not do a good job of preparing us for the exam and was disorganized in general, so I hope you don’t have the same experience. One of my resulting problems was that I always taught myself for the test and nothing really stuck for the AP exam. Pay very careful attention in that class and make sure you try to focus on RETAINING, not just memorizing. The AP Bio exam is geared to stop asking you to regurgitate information and to analyze instead. There will be lots of graphs, charts, tables, diagrams, etc that you have to analyze. Honestly, that was most of my AP exam. Also focus on knowing some statistics and how to construct your own graphs, because that will pop up in the FRQs. I had the Princeton review book, but many people had Barron’s. From what it seems, Barron’s goes more in depth, and Princeton is more general. YouTube channels to pay attention to would be Crash Course and Khan Academy, in my opinion.
I saved my favorite for last, AP Lang. I’m a big English person and I love writing, so this class was fantastic. I think it’s the most practical class of high school: it helped me write better essays in my other classes and made tests like the SAT and ACT so much better when it came to the essay. There isn’t much of a way to study for this class, and I didn’t have a review book. A lot of it will be a learning experience. I’ll advise you not to be frustrated if your work at the beginning doesn’t get as high marks as you’d like. You’ll learn and develop as a writer, so you need patience for this class. If you really want to try to prepare for this class, do some reading over the summer, whether it be school assigned summer reading or independent reading. Try to pay attention to how the author’s language makes the book good or bad, in short. Is it an effective way or writing, and what makes you think so? Once you start thinking about that, you’ll be more prepared when your teacher asks you to do it in AP Lang. I agree with the above about keeping up with current events; my teacher would make us read the news once a week in class. It’s good for when you need examples to back up your point on the exam. And like goldnotes said, practice your multiple choice when you get to the class. Eventually you will become familiar with the types of questions the exam will ask, as well as the three types of essays and writing them in the time restraint.
Don’t worry too much about summer preparation, but if you want to get familiar, it couldn’t hurt.
Good luck!