<p>Oh yeah, regarding the "study early" thing:
A good friend of mine decided to start extensive review 1 month before the test. She bought the REA and read it. A week before the test, she realized she forgot colonial era detail, so she had to read the REA again...She essentially ended up at the same position everyone else was at despite starting early. I stayed at home the day before the AP and review for 10 hours...We ended up with the same AP score (5), so I'm unsure whether studying early is "better." It's equally stressful and sometimes, more work.
By the way, my friend is by no means poor in academics. Nat'l AP at the end of junior year, 3.98/4 etc. etc...Just goes to show that everyone can forget details because APUSH covers a lot of material.</p>
<p>peruse AMSCO...hands down. i didn't take a u.s. history course and read AMSCO a month before the exam along with some material on specific periods -- scored a 5. </p>
<p>also, it's very important to be able to associate certain time periods with their respective presidents. i printed out a chronological list of our presidents which had bullets of specific events/associations.</p>
<p>looks like everyone reccomends AMSCO, Ilooked for it but I can't find it in the barnes and noble near me. I had to get REA instead. I looked over it and it was alright, but I'm sure Amsco is better. I bought the REA with the cd in it, but I tried using it on my computer and it doesn't work. Does anyone know where I can purchase the APUSH Amsco book?</p>
<p>^^ just search "AMSCO" and there are many threads where people post the link where you can buy it directly from the publisher.</p>
<p>also, what i think turned out to be the difference between a getting a "5" as opposed to anything lower was knowing how to take the test. sounds cliche, but it's true. </p>
<p>scoring a 5 does not solely come down to who knows the most. you hafta know what they want on the essays, especially the dbq. for myself, i had never written a dbq (didn't take the course) let alone any ap course prior to this year, so i had to figure something out the night before. now here's the key: the dbq is, if not, always on a certain topic that hasn't been questioned in dbqs in the years before. so the best way to be prepared is to get a list of past dbq topics and try to "predict" what might be on the dbq for whatever year you plan to take the ap u.s. exam. for this year's, i spent about 30 minutes on each topic that i thought might appear: the gilded age, native americans, imperialism, and others. and guess what? the dbq was on the time period 1865-1900! (the gilded age is agreed to have been the time period 1877-1900.) </p>
<p>so just going through specific topics a couples of day before the exam is really helpful -- it doesn't take much time to skim through the info in a prep book, and most likely you will have retained key words for the essay questions; and it seems that key words (i.e., specific documents, acts, etc.)are *key, since i notice a lot of folks scoring 5s on any of the english aps scored 3s or 4s on ap u.s.</p>
<p>just read read read read! do NOT procrastinate....READ!</p>
<p>Download and print out something called "The Giant APUSH Review Guide" by this student in New York. It's 70-ish pages and a gem to treasure for APUSH.</p>
<p>That outline alone, without any prep books, got me through APUSH and to a 5.</p>
<p>IMO it helps that you use other resources as study aids, because no book covers everything. also, make connections between random historical things. i'm by no means a history buff, and i dont have a fantastic memory, but the curve for APUSH isnt too bad. I reviewed for the May SAT II USH and the AP a few days before the tests and got an 800/5. yea, dont stress history isnt that hard</p>
<p>I don't think American Pageant is very good for a college-level text (see Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen). The Brinkley book is good. You could get a condensed version of American History: A Survey or check out a brief edition of Nation of Nations by Davidson, et. al. Use Review Text in American History by Irving L. Gordon, but also pay attention to important people you may not know about from that book itself (e.g. Ida Tarbell, Carrie Chapman Catt). Princeton Review is good.</p>
<p>American Pageant is one of the WORST history books. Not kidding, apparently it was on some list.</p>