Comparative Government questions

Test Preparation AP History & Social Sciences
1

I’m taking AP Comparative Gov’t this year as a Junior and I can’t help but wonder about this class, now that I’ve started learning about the case countries. I have no clue what I should be focusing on… My class tests are reasonable and that isn’t my problem, but for the sake of retaining pertinent information for the AP test, what on earth should I be zoning in on?</p>

I haven’t seen any other threads for this class, so I’ll say what I DO know: that hardly anybody takes this test, you rarely receive credit for it, it was just created, and if you study from Ethel Woods’ prep book (which I own and do study from) you should be A-OK. But I’m still a little lost in the woods…</p>

Is the test HARD? It seems to hardly scratch the surface of the 6 countries. I’m not trying to be the normal CC student and proclaim that everything is easy for me and that I have a superhuman memory (because I am most certainly struggling in my other AP classes to retain it all) but this one class HONESTLY seems to be a total joke. Even the AP test itself. Can anybody weigh in on its difficulty level, and if we should focus more or less on the straight history of the countries, or their current governments, or the stuff that isn’t strictly about the 6 countries or what… It all seems so vaguely defined.</p>

Please help? :)</p>

2

You don’t need to know the specific histories. Just know the general trends, like if there was an imperial history, a history of authoritarian rule, etc. You should know the workings of each government, and what power each organization has, such as the Duma, Majles, Supreme Leader, etc. Know the parties and characteristics of each country, along with recent history such as elections, transfers of powers between parties, etc. As for the “general” information that is non-country specific, such as unitary governments and GNP vs GDP, this will be on the test so you should know this as well.</p>

3

That test was kind of a joke…
there was like a question or two in the multiple choice totally not covered in Ethel Woods
but it was really easy
like really easy
The free response- a few of them of 7 or 9?- got kind of specific though, like mine was state 3 of Putin’s centralizing policies and like state a specific violence that occured in UK and Nigeria’s recent elections? or something like that.
But I really wouldn’t fret over it. I learned it in 2 days and believed I aced it.</p>