Hello! I am currently a sophomore and I am taking 4 AP tests this year: AP Statistics, AP Chemistry, AP Chinese (raised by bilingual parents), and AP American History/Geography. Could anyone give me advice regarding the AP tests I’m taking, or rank them by difficulty?
Thank you so much!
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AP American history/geography? Do you mean AP US history?
I never took AP Stats, but I would rank AP Chemistry as the hardest. APUSH might have a lot of reading and memorization but fundamentally it’s not very difficult content. For me personally AP Chinese was the easiest AP exam I ever took, but that depends on your mastery of the language.
For Chem focus on understanding the concepts and knowing how to recognize and apply the formulas and knowledge you have. Being able to analyze the question and apply something to an unfamiliar scenario is key for this class and test. I used REA Crash Course for review and got a 5, but you should check the AP Chem thread for more up to date review book reviews.
I took the old version of the APUSH test so I don’t know what the good review books are anymore. You should definitely memorize important dates and events and legislation, and make sure to keep track of societal/political change throughout American history (eg. women’s rights, slavery/civil rights, labor rights, religion, political ideology/parties, etc).
Idk how good your chinese is, but the most important thing for AP Chinese regardless of your skill is to practice, practice, practice, especially the speaking sections.
Good luck!
The REA Crash Course actually was the best study guide for my daughter, who self-studied for the APush exam and got a 5 last spring. After all her studying and consulting of numerous texts, the final two weeks before the exam I found an old REA copy and she said it was the only thing that really helped her to see the cohesive aspects to the various ideas, characters, movements and periods in history that she was asked to examine.
You’re a sophomore? Wow, that’s quite a course load. Thought you might want to see the distribution of AP scores across the years and then determine for yourself which may present as the most challenging: http://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/2015-AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php
Everything will depend on how well you have been prepared. For example, I have noticed that a lot of people are ranking Chemistry and Physics as the hardest AP exams they have taken, but for me, I have had two extremely good teachers in both subjects that prepared me extremely well for the tests, so to me they both were really easy and I was absolutely sure that I would get 5s in them. Similarly, I am a native Chinese speaker, so I didn’t even have to take the Chinese class or read a prep book and still breezed through the test. Personally, Spanish was by far the hardest for me, but that was because I am not even close to a native Spanish speaker and my teacher was mediocre at best. So honestly, we can’t really tell you how hard they will be. You will have to see through the year if you feel that your teachers have adequately prepared you for the tests; to me that’s the only way of really answer your questions.