A week before the APUSH exam, last tips/advice?

So the exam is 6 days away! So nervous, partly because I really don’t feel confident about the exam. I also have AP physics on monday, so I have to devote time on physics as well. Im wondering with this last week, what should I be focusing on, and how should I approach it? I’ve read AMSCO all the way through, and with DBQs I think I can do okay in cause I took AP world last year and we did a little bit of DBQs in our class. The essay questions I’m actually pretty nervous about. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!</p>

<p>The AMSCO is honestly a good tool to use. Our APUSH told us to check them out if we wanted to since no one read the textbook. (Me and my friends refused to read the textbook. Left it sitting at home the whole year. :D) I skimmed over the Amsco and I got the REA Crash Course book for APUSH. I highly recommend that book! Gives great outlines to the entire course and picks out the major points you need. Make sure you know your Vocab words for the FRQs and make sure you take the Practice and Released Exams that are online. The legit ones from the College Board. </p>

<p>Got a 3 in APUSH last year! Good luck hun! :)</p>

<p>Spend your last few days thinking about big picture concepts and what you would write about if you were to get an essay on each of the topics. Forget about detailed studying- that won’t do you much good at this point.</p>

<p>(Got a 5 on APUSH last year)</p>

<p>Yeah I’ve began to look through past free response essays and seeing if I can answer them. I’m not sure how I can study the big picture concepts, any advice on that?</p>

<p>For the big picture & concepts. you can try & write a thesis for every major time period. your thesis would be like the main idea of the era. like the Cold War would be something like this: During the Cold War Americans were afraid of Communism spreading to other parts of the world & would threaten democratic principles, we used out policy of containment to prevent communism from spreading. & then some examples of what we did in the Cold War. something like that, but it would be better than mine because mine is improvised. hope that helps! good luck!</p>

<p>If you had a good teacher, and the APUS course you took prepared you well, you don’t need to worry too much. I had the two, studied the night before (that’s it, along with in class review), and got a 5.</p>

<p>Be familiar with the released questions on past APUSH Exams. You’ll notice some of them are very trivial and random. EXAMPLES: What author wrote Silent Spring regarding pesticide use? Three Mile Island was significant since…? I remember there also be questions asking what influenced Rock and Roll and it was Hip Hop. Questions like that. Very random.</p>

<p>Also DBQs in World and U.S. are VERY different. World requires to incorporate ALL documents into your essay for a high score, while in U.S. a good 5-7 documents are all you need for your essay. I think last year I used 6 docs, 2 in each body paragraph. Use the easy ones that won’t lead you into misinterpretations.</p>

<p>To add to the posts above, the DBQ is really similar to the AP English Language synthesis essay. If you ever took that class, you’ll see the similarities.</p>

<p>Also, our teacher gave us the “half plus one” rule to determine the number of DBQ docs to use. For example, if college board gives you 6 documents, use half (3) plus 1, meaning 4 documents.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>Review major themes for the essays - you have a choice, so even if one question is an oddball one, you will likely have a more mainstream one to fall back on. The MC questions are sometimes specific and not thematic information but honestly historical trivia - for that, I recommend the essential content book or a thorough examination of some of the past APUS/Subject test US history threads. Good luck!</p>

<p>Thanks for all the replies guys! Eh my APUSH class really isn’t that good, the past month has really just been self studying cause our teacher isn’t helping out much cause we got so behind. I have heard of the n/2 + 1 rule for DBQs so I’ll do my best to incorporate that. The thesis thing sounds like a good idea, for me to take a step back and analyze history with a wider perspective. I’ll be sure to report Wednesday night how it went!</p>