<p>. . . would you mind letting me know (if you know) what study guide he or she used, and whether it was helpful? Thanks!</p>
<p>I agreed to go to the bookstore and pick up study guides for son but he said "Just get anything" and I am thinking I need a little more direction . . .</p>
<p>Check out the AP prep forum!!! :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/ap-tests-preparation/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/ap-tests-preparation/</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the link. I did stop first at the AP forum. From what I can tell, there is an assortment of opinions on the best book for U.S. Government and no opinions (that I could locate) on Literature. My hope in posting on the parents’ forum was that with a different set of responders, perhaps a consensus would emerge . . .</p>
<p>I found the Princeton Review and other guidebooks for literature to be very poor, even misleading. The best way to prepare is to read a lot of poetry and short stories and to look at real past exams. The Norton Anthologies are great collections for these purposes.</p>
<p>S’s AP Govt teacher handed out “Five Steps to a Five.” </p>
<p>S has a review book that I bought him, but it’s buried in his disaster of a room somewhere and I don’t remember which it is; I’d looked through the threads on the AP forum here and picked based on comments there.</p>
<p>Now if only he’d open the loaner review book from his teacher, or the AP Chem one, or get cracking on the online review for AP Comp Sci, I’d be a lot happier! (And let’s not even mention the SAT II Math and Chem tests he has a week from Saturday!!)</p>
<p>I used the Princeton Review for the AP US Government and Politics exam this past year, and found it to be very useful. I feel pretty good about it as the tests inside of the PR books not only give you the correct answer but explanations as to why the wrong answers are well… wrong. But some of those explanations helped on the tests. Anyway, PR was alot better for AP US Gov.; however, I did not take the AP Lit class so I have no knowledge of that class. Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Neither required books, in fact I didn’t study for either and I am confident I got a five in both. Gov is just a redux of us history with some policy spin and lit is just basic skills you’ll either know or you wont.</p>
<p>My son uses Princeton Review. His AP English teacher, however, uses a variety of review books. She often copies portions of the practice tests, gives them as homework assignments and uses them to see where the kids are. She has had plenty of success of the years.</p>
<p>Barron’s Lit is a decent brush-up guide, but the nature of the AP lit exam is that reading comprehension, analysis, and writing skills matter the most, and the easiest way to improve them is to be constantly reading, writing, and revising. Any of the prep books are pretty good for working on vocabulaly and literary terms/devices.</p>
<p>I took the AP US Government exam this year and I used the Princeton Review book, nothing else. It was fantastic. It was very quick, simple, and easy to read and I am almost sure I got a 4 or 5 on the exam. I was also going to use Barron’s but it looked too long and detailed and required a lot of patience to read.</p>
<p>I used REA for the US Govt test and I liked it. Got a 5 on the exam. The only prep I did for English was in-class, going over the novels we had read that year. Got a 4.</p>
<p>In general, I like Barron’s and hate Princeton Review, but that’s just personal preference. What I did for each test was go to the bookstore and literally sit there flipping through different study guides. I picked the ones that I liked best - lots of study questions, plenty of explanation.</p>
<p>That’s definitely the approach I’d recommend.</p>
<p>Kids in my class seemed to enjoy 5 Steps to a 5 for AP Government. If you want something more thorough Barron’s or Princeton Review is probably better, but if you want a review guide that is approachable and not intimidating for the type of student who doesn’t like to read a lot or is not an extremely dedicated studier, I definitely recommend 5 Steps. This book was also excellent for AP bio. </p>
<p>As for the lit exam, my teacher told us that we could buy a book if we wanted to, but didn’t believe it would really help. Basically, we did group discussions about different poems and literature from previous tests, discussing how we would have answered the questions and picking out various elements we could talk about. We also were told to make ourselves really familiar with several different works for the outside reading response.</p>
<p>That’s just my experience.</p>
<p>As a parent, I think 5 for a 5 is only good for review since it is so brief. PR is better for Govt. Can’t really study much for Lit. Better to download old tests from Collegeboard and practice those.</p>