*Official AP Art History Thread*

<p>Which high school in Silver Spring?</p>

<p>It stands for the university of michigan, I made it when I was much younger and I am applying in the fall. If I dont go to Umich I guess I will have to change it...</p>

<p>Here are a few thoughts on AP Art History:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>It can be a great course. It can also be an awful course. Everything depends upon your teacher. But I guess this is true of most courses.</p></li>
<li><p>The AP Art History test is very challenging. There are 115 multiple choice questions, 7 short essays, and 2 long essays. Your tests should be mini-AP tests. All of ours were.</p></li>
<li><p>The best book is Garnder's Art Through the Ages 12th edition. I say best because when all is said and done almost every question on this year's test was from Gardner's.</p></li>
<li><p>There are no Princeton Review, Kaplan review books. The reason is simple: Only about 12,000 students take the AP test. So the market is very small. We had Gardner's and The Annotated Mona Lisa and The Annotated Arch. We also had a truly killer review packet. The information in this packet virtually guaranteed a 4.</p></li>
<li><p>Competition on the Art AP test is fierce. Here is the reason: Approximately one-third of the students taking the test attend school's for the performing arts. They have enormous advantages including 4 years of required art classes. Another third of the students attend top private schools. And finally, one-third attend top public schools. There are few if any weak competitors.</p></li>
<li><p>Your classroom should be a visually rich environment. Believe it or not we never saw a single slide. All of our images were on disks and projected onto two large flat screen TVs. Meanwhile we always had over 60 art posters displayed in the room. We were totally saturated with great art.</p></li>
<li><p>Non-Western Art is interesting but from a pragmatic point of view not much help on the test. We spent almost no time on non-Western art except Egypt, Islam and Ancient Near East. Teachers said there would be very little on the test. They were right. Best to work on non-Western art AFTER the AP test.</p></li>
<li><p>Our teachers brought each object to life. Lots of vivid stories. As a result it was easy to remember artists, styles and key works. Many art teachers are hung up on trivial details - dates etc. Ugh!</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Will be happy to answer questions and provide tips. Hope this helps.</p>

<p>Well, it's in North Besthesda...Georgetown Preparatory School (Prep for short.) The one with the lacrosse team.</p>

<p>Thanks sunnyboy, im not sure if we will have the resources to do all of that but I will certainly relay the teaching technique and books to my teacher this year.</p>