Self-Study APs?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>So my school doesn't offer many AP's at all, most of which you can't take until senior year. APUSH is a junior course, but other than that, there's AP English Lit, AP Calc AB, AP Physics B and AP Enviro Sci.</p>

<p>What upsets me most is that you can only select about two of these senior year due to scheduling.</p>

<p>Thus, I'm interested in self-studying. I am a sophomore this year and this is my course schedule:</p>

<p>English 10 Honors/Humanities
World History Honors/Humanities
Art III Honors/Humanities</p>

<p>Biology I Honors</p>

<p>Geometry Honors (Algebra II Honors last year)</p>

<p>German II
(The rest are minor electives)</p>

<p>Last Year:</p>

<p>English 9 Honors
Intro to Historical Studies Honors (We really did nothing at all!)
Algebra II Honors
Earth Science Honors
Art II
Music Through the Ages
(and a few minor electives)</p>

<p>Do you recommend self-studying for any AP's this year? Next year? Senior Year?
Which do you recommend and why?
Is it really possible to grasp the concepts without actually having a class or formal tests and assignments?</p>

<p>If you do recommend self-studying anything, which textbooks/prep books do you recommend?</p>

2

<p>Pick 1/2 of Human Geography/Biology/US Government. All of them are easy and lend themselves to self studying. Look at the “AP Preperation” forums Self Studying guide for a comprehensive book list. My personal reccomendation would be you buy the Barron’s for Human Geo and the Clif’s for Biology. Start reading in March and go through each book twice/three times. Easy 5’s.</p>

3

<p>Thanks! Would you recommend buying textbooks to use for those, or just sticking with the prep books?</p>

<p>How much of a time commitment does studying for each of those exams require?</p>

4

<p>About a week each.
You can also do psych or envsci.</p>

5

<p>Thanks again for the responses!</p>

<p>Really, like a week straight, just studying for the exams, or like 2-3 hours each day? Do I just use a prep book or do i attempt to read the texts in that time?</p>

<p>I’ll take psych and envsci in school, so i don’t see the point in self-studying for them.
Any other to self study easily?</p>

6

<p>There’s a great self study info thread in the AP section. That might help you out.</p>

7

<p>Oh yeah… I’ve looked at that. Thanks though!!</p>

8

<p>You could probably self-study Human Geography too.</p>

9

<p>DON’T overload yourself. Self-studying for something like Biology is NOT easy. It requires a lot of discipline and a good understanding.<br>
Also, I would advise against self-studying anything you can simply take at school. It’s always more beneficial to have a course (especially if then you study on your own also DURING the course).
It comes down to quality vs. quantity. I can tell you that it’s much better to take a few APs but get high scores than a bunch of APs with low scores. Since you want to self-study on top of your regular courses, I would recommend only taking on about 2-3. APs were not meant to be self-studied, they were meant to be a final for your class to see if it is comparable to a college class and if you learned as much as you should have if you were in a college course. (Being in a class at a local college I can tell you that APs are harder than their comparable college courses)</p>

<p>Good luck, but don’t overload yourself!</p>

10

<p>Anyone else have any thoughts on this???</p>