<p>I also got a 5 as a sophomore. I used Barrons and it was honestly, as other posters have stated, overkill. The book went over detailed embryology which was not on the test at all, for example. It’s not a bad book by any means, but I do hope Barrons comes out with a new version as the latest version is from early 2013, and that was before anyone knew what the test was going to be like. I do have a few tips for people taking the class next year. The MC was really easy and many of my friends who took the test also concurred. The MC do not test factual knowledge but conceptual knowledge. The real killer is the FR. You have one hour and twenty minutes for 8 free responses, and it’s honestly not enough. I finished all the FRs except for one of them, for which I only wrote three sentences. But as long as you demonstrate on the test that you thoroughly understand the general concepts of AP Biology, like evolution, protein/enzyme function and structure, you will get a 4 or 5.</p>
<p>So, my plan for the year was pretty basic. I opened the textbook a total of once for the first test, but then it gathered dust from then on. I listened to my teacher’s lectures and aced every test. A week before the AP test, I read through most of my Kapplan guide. I swear by the thing, and I haven’t seen it mentioned in this thread yet. I used the 14-15 version, so I assume you upcoming class takers will use the same year that I did, and its absolutely wonderful. Advice for the test? Know your kingdoms, know your phyla, no need for anything deeper. know calvin cycle and differences between light dependent and light independent reactions (“carbon fixation and sugar building”), know the basic outline of the Krebs cycle, and what happens where in the mitochondria. Like someone earlier said, be able to give everything a reason based on evolution/natural selection. Know the basic setup of the specific immune response, like B and T-cells, and the difference between that and nonspecific response. Know potassium is pumped into nerve cells and sodium is pumped out to make an action potential. Understand the different layers in a generic leaf, and that PLANTS ALSO GO THROUGH RESPIRATION. Reading graphs and charts is also a MUST. I feel like somebody could read that up there and get a three on the test after ten minutes of looking it up. I got a 5, by the way, incase you were wondering. Good Luck!</p>
<p>Hey guys, I found out yesterday that I got a 3 on my AP Biology exam and I was VERY disappointed. Coming out of the testing room I was 95% sure that I had gotten a 5 because I found the exam so easy! The MC was a breeze since it only covered general material and I had study very hard and knew everything in detail (I read Campbell throughout the school year and started reviewing with Cliff Notes 3 weeks before the exam). My teacher gave us several practice exams and I always scored in the 80s in the multiple choice and pretty well in the essay section too. I studied extremely hard throughout the school year (got a 4.00 on one of the trimesters) and I even got the diploma for being the class’ best student! I have no idea how I got that 3! I’ve been thinking about requesting a rescore, does that still exist? If so, what information should I include on the letter and what’s the address or fax number? Do you guys think it’s worth it?
I’ve read that many people have gotten 1’s and 2’s on exams they’ve felt completely confident about and once they’ve gotten them rescored, their grades have gone up to 4’s and 5’s. Do you guys think that I should request a rescore? I want to major in Molecular Biology and so it wouldn’t look good in my college applications since I’m hoping to attend a college such as UPENN or JHU.</p>
<p>Got a 5 as a sophomore!!! I could not believe it. I thought I would probably get a four. However, I did a enormous amount of studying, and I’m happy it paid off. I used Barrons for studying. I found it very useful to take notes during class. I also found it enormously helpful to take notes from the book for everything. Our class text book was the Campbell- Reese 8th edition, and many of the experiments presented in it were similar to the free response question experiments.Also, I found Bozeman Science and Crash Course videos very useful.</p>
<p>My Advice: Please do not slack off and take it easy throughout the year. Make sure you work hard, even if you get A’s in class. Focus on general concepts and find examples of how they are exhibited in biology. Study experiments and know how to interpret graphs. Even if your teacher tells you not to worry about a topic, make sure you skim over it. </p>
<p>Also, @AnaLop, if you are confident and you know you did better, it may be worthwhile to do rescoring. Try looking over the free response questions that were on the test. They are on the collegeboard website. See if you could have missed a lot of points on a question or two. Just remember that if Collegeboard does not find any errors, you will not be refunded. Also, please remember that ONLY the muliple choice section can be rescored. There is additional information about rescoring at this link; <a href=“Helping Students with Scores – AP Central | College Board”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/ap/scores/reporting/for-students</a> . </p>
<p>I want to contribute to this thread just to reiterate a few points and also to make some remarks based on previous posts that I’m seeing. I received a 5 on the exam as a Senior, which I’m very grateful for, and I noticed that an unusually high number of other posters also received 5s. My thinking behind this is that the people who received 5s (or just a high score in general) are more eager to share the fact, and more eager to give advice to others on how to do the same. I think it’s way too soon to just assume that a lot of people scored 5s in general this year. Now I don’t have any extraordinary advice to share or any tips or tricks that I found especially useful. I want to go back to one of my original comments on the test: there were two versions of it, one that we agreed was noticeably easier and another that we agreed was remarkably more difficult. In either case, the multiple choice questions were a breeze, and I don’t think anyone has the right to say that that’s because they studied and crammed for x hours the night before. If you did study and cram the entire night before, good for you, and I applaud your dedication; but if you didn’t, you probably turned out fine for that section anyway. To put it plainly, we got lucky with the multiple choice. They could have chosen a wider range of topics to cover or a more complex array of questions, but for some reason, they didn’t. There were very few questions that required intense thinking, remembering, or (goodness forbid) guessing, so we just got lucky. The free response portion is where it gets a little muckier. The FRQs were what separated the two versions of the test. Whereas one version asked about speciation and genetics, the other asked about response systems and who knows what else. Now I obviously only took one version of the test, so I can’t speak to the other, but I can say with confidence that SPECIFIC DETAILS are not nearly as important as REASONED AND WELL-DELIVERED THOUGHTS when it comes to scoring those FRQs. I may not have known how to specifically compare and contrast a reflex arch to the central nervous system, but I knew that there was some type of relationship, some type of similarity between the two. My teacher explained this to us all year and I’m extremely appreciative of her for it: the old test demanded quick regurgitation of learned material, but the new test aims to determine how well you can think through, reason, analyze, and interpret material and facts in order to determine their importance and relevance. I rarely studied for AP Bio – maybe once or twice before a test, and that was just a brief review of notes --, I definitely never bought a review or prep book, and I didn’t cram the night before. I sat in class and listened to my teacher lecture. I took notes to help me record and piece together the facts and the material. I used labs as a way to apply what we’d learned and to make connections. I asked important questions to help me understand the big picture. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I just had a good teacher. Maybe I’m just a good student and it came easier to me than to others. But maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t any of these things. And more likely than not, once you understand what AP wants of you, maybe you can do it too. Good luck!</p>
<p>The AP Biology really focuses more on Critical Thinking and understanding than just cramming. Barrons or Cliffsnotes along with understanding of the subject will easily fetch a 5!</p>
<p>I agree with @nickraposo . I am the only person I know who got a 5 on the test and people who got the highest grade in my AP bio class got 3’s and 4’s (which is a class where USUALLY over 75% of the class gets a 5 but not this year). People like me just want to let the future test takers know that you dont have to cram to get a good grade and that books like Barrons are just overkill. </p>
<p>Looooooooooool
Got a 800 on Bio M Sat Subject and a 5 on AP and still ended up with an 89.2 avg. ■■■</p>
<p>Just saw the 2014 exam data, which is interesting.</p>
<p>Here it is: <a href=“AP Biology Exam Data 2014 – Mr. Chinn's Site”>http://galileoweb.org/chinnc/ap-biology-08-09/2014-ap-biology-results/</a> </p>
<p>hey guys do you know any released questions that i can study, im thinking mc for 2012,2013,2014?</p>