<p>[If there is already a thread like this, just let me know! :) ]</p>
<p>Does anyone have any good AP tips from their teachers?</p>
<p>I'm just in APUSH and AP Eng Lang, right now.</p>
<p>My USH teacher has a formula for thesis statements that most follow:
"By analyzing blank, blank, and blank, it becomes apparent that blank."
I've never used it yet, but my school is known for doing very well.
I don't know if what she tells us is the exact same as what other teachers say, so I'll add some more.</p>
<p>-ABBREVIATE! Almost everything! [although, my Eng Lang teacher said that would be disastrous for the Eng Lang test... but it apparently works for history!]
-Five paragraphs, unless it should be four. Conclusion should quickly restate thesis, but then go into a new piece of analysis.
-Make sure topic sentences all repeat EVERY part of question.
-Circle/underline dates/sources on DBQ docs.</p>
<p>And as for AP Eng Lang, there aren't too many tips/tricks I've heard. But here are some pretty basic ones.
-Don't force a 5 paragraph essay.
-Don't laundry list [1 paragraph each for tone, diction, syntax]
-Make sure all sources are properly cited in synthesis essay. When in doubt, cite. [Wrongful citations can result in a 0 on the essay.]</p>
<p>Well that's all I've got for now.
What have your teachers told you guys?</p>
<p>These are all for calculus.</p>
<p>On the exam, don't simplify your numeric computations in the end. If the answer is 18/5, you get just as many points for writing 18/5 as you do 3.6. But if you accidentally simplify 18/5 to 3.4, you just lost the answer point that you already had. A more extreme case of this? The AP Exam accepts 2+2 instead of the answer 4 as being "mathematically correct".</p>
<p>Also, tend to stick with one explanation to explain why something occurs. If you provide multiple explanations, you can oftentimes lose your explanation point if any of the additional reasons you provide is incorrect.</p>
<p>Also, and I can't stress this enough, for separable differential equations, you certainly want to solve for C as soon as you've finished the integration step, rather than manipulating C around all over the place to solve for y. You still need to solve for y in these problems, but I've noticed people do a whole lot better when they solve for C, and then solve for y. I think it has to do with confidence in manipulating numbers.</p>
<p>A lot of times, a question that asks for units will require you to have indicated the units on all the parts of a question in order to earn the units point. If you know the units you're supposed to have, but aren't exactly sure how to do the problem, make up a reasonable sounding number so that you can include the units (you can't just blindly write m/s^2 without a number) and earn that point. The rubrics are increasingly allocating one of the nine FR points on a question for having it on part (a) AND part (b) AND part (c), and what happens is that students who feel like they can't answer the question leave it blank when they know that piece.</p>
<p>Lastly, and this might hold for all subjects, don't erase what you have until you KNOW you have something better. And unless it's a small amount to erase, crossing out the section you don't want scored might be faster and easier to do, and just as effective. (The scorers won't look over there and say, "Oh, man, I can't believe student X was thinking this!")</p>