Hi, i’m a senior in AP Bio. It’s been a pretty easy class all year for me, i’ve always had around a 95. I wasn’t surprised because i’m a good student and science has always been my strong suit. However my class just took a mock exam and we all did horrible, all getting 1s and 2s. Honestly I had only seen around 3 of the concepts that were on the test. We never learned any of the equations or graphs that were on the test.
After talking to friends from other schools I realized that my teacher did an awful job of preparing us- we rarely read the book, rarely took notes, we had never taken any practice exams and our tests were written by her, not written like the ap exam, our tests were designed so we could get as high of grades as possible, with many “freebie” questions. Most of our class time was spent goofing around and talking.
Is there anything I can do to salvage this? I’m feeling extremely stressed about it since theres a few weeks till the test and I have 4 other exams to study for. Thank you all so much!
I would say just check out/buy a prep book and hit it hard in any free time you have before the test… You may have to give up your social life for a few weeks but I’d say it’s worth it
Barron’s is really good, but don’t rely on the essay questions from prep books, they’re really different from the actual test. Also I think Bozeman Science and Crash Course (both on YouTube) are extremely helpful.
Strictly speaking, you don’t have to take the AP bio exam. If you don’t take the exam, you just won’t get AP credit for that particular class. I know one student who took 5 AP classes senior year, but only took 4 exams. She did very well on the 4 AP exams that she did take, and her university gave her AP credit for the 4 exams that she did take.
You will have to take whatever tests are handed out as part of your class.
I think that the alternative is to do as others have suggested and study on your own for the AP exam. Also, I agree with @mommdc that if you don’ t do well on the AP bio exam, then you will want to take intro bio in college anyway.
@jakeowl Yeah, I know its not good to only rely on the teacher. I just didn’t even know I was struggling because I had been getting such high grades all year. The test was like a shock to all of us, haha
@DadTwoGirls It’s too late to “unregister” for the AP test, so i’m stuck taking it. I’m trying to study as much as possible, but I have four other exams that I also have to study for, so it’s mainly an issue of not having the time to basically learn the entire course in the 2 weeks that I have. I’m a bio major anyway so i’ll be taking a lot of bio in college.
@studying4seoul Take one asap!! And then go through it and see if there are any concepts you are struggling with the most- I found out that I know basically nothing about cell signaling/chemistry aspects of bio while im good on most other concepts. I studied those for like 10 hours and I took another mock exam and got a 3.
Get a princeton review or barrons book and take the 2015 and 2016 previous exams if you can. You should go thru quick reviews and main ideas in the books to be efficient. Try doing the ap bio review on Khan academy (not too long) and it should let you know what you know or don’t know. Also practice FRQs. Watch bozeman lab vids too.
I havent been a great student this year (im a freshman) only averaging 85s, and in the beginning Cs. So im super worried but i did go thru some of the review books and gotten 3s on the mock exams. Currently watching khan academy and bozeman science & practicing FRQs. hopefully I’ll get a 4 on monday.
