Hi! I am taking AP Bio this year, what are the best review books and flash cards? I heard Barron’s is the best, but I’m sure there are other arguments of other review books that are also as effective.I would like to read more about all the review books for AP Bio. In my high school, I have an excellent teacher who generally has students get 4 and 5, (as this year the 4 and 5 scores have doubled for them) at most but regardless I do not underestimate the class or even the exam, I simply want to be prepared to achieve a 5 with placing my own efforts to the maximum.
I have little experience with using review books, I took 3 AP classes without them (well only AP World I used it but not much) but I still passed all. can anyone tell me out to use it for self study with a review book? (I want to pass AP Bio with all my effort unlike the previous times) I am confused with how to you review with them at the start of the year while you are learning the topics…
My apologies for my messy, jumbled writing in advance.
My teacher recommends using Barron’s. I looked through Barron’s and like it a lot so I’m going to stick with it. My teacher also showed us this video on photosynthesis. It was pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1cmIbb2ZLm8uwqDUxlqeEA/videos
I got a 5 without using a review book. I would recommend downloading free response questions from previous years (just search “AP Bio FRQ”) and taking and scoring them as if they were real (so, no looking at notes or the answers). I would leave a few years (probably 2016 and 2017) to do in the weeks before the AP exam in May, but as for the other years you can look through and find questions that are about the chapters you are currently learning and do only those. You should try to get a 10/10 (or 4/4, 3/3) on every question even though you don’t need that to get a 5 and (because on the AP Bio exam more points are available than you can actually get), you should try to at least understand ALL of the available points, even if you get a 10/10 on a given free response question.
As for using a review book, it probably won’t be all that useful until you’ve at least learned most of the material (I’ve only used Barron’s for subject tests, but I found that it tends to only go over the topics you need to know, not actually teach them to you; HOWEVER, the point is to review, not learn it from the book). If you really want to use a review book, you could go over the Barron’s chapters after you learn them in class and annotate them with the topics your teacher emphasized, that way you’ll be able to look back on them before the AP test and know what topics are most important to remember.
Hope that was helpful!
Barrons, Campbell Biology Prep Book are real good. Find practice tests and FRQ’s online also. Watch though Crash Course, Bozeman Science, Khan Academy for a good supplement. Quizlet to memories the vocab and facts. Reread textbook chapters and take notes. Should be set for a 4 or 5 on the exam with these tips!
Campbell is great. This is from someone who got a 5 last year.