I’m going to be taking my first AP class, AP US Gov, this year as a sophomore. I’m a little nervous for it, even though I’ve heard good things about the class. I see a lot of posts on how the test is and how to study for it, but what I really want to know is what grade you received in the actual class. Someone told me it was considered good to get an 80, but I would consider that bad-and after all, wouldn’t you take the class so that your weighted grade would end up being well over 100? And how much work do you receive for homework? I was thinking about self-studying AP Environmental Science throughout the year since they don’t have it at school and I can only take 1 AP class as a sophomore, but I don’t want to overload. Any tips are greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I think the class itself depends on the teacher, to be honest. My teacher was absolutely horrible and taught us nothing, but I managed to pull a five on the exam by doing a lot of group studying with my friends and using Princeton Review.</p>
<p>Either way, make sure you do your own studying. It’s not the most difficult exam but knowing your stuff all the way through will get you at least a four. Good luck! </p>
<p>The two teachers who teach it at my school are great so there’s a record number of kids at our school who take ap gov (double the amount who take regular job) but most are the “slacker” c student type who take it for an easy a because it is a very easy a but everybody I know got a 2 and only 2 people got 3’s but what do you expect out of the slackers?? so as long as you study for the exam you will do fine!!! In my opinion it’s the easiest ap class you can take</p>
<p>I took AP Gov and AP Comparative Gov and Politics as a year-long combined class, US Gov in the first semester and Comparative in the second. The teacher that taught me holds a PHD in public administration and political science at Brown and Yale respectively, and formerly taught in HYPs as a professor for a while. As such, his class was modeled as seminars: Not much homework, but intense writing assignments and brutal tests. I ended with an A- semester one and A in the second. 5s on both. A classmate who studied far, far, harder than me ended with B+ and A respectively, 5s for him as well.</p>
<p>Test format was usually 40-70 MCQs and 1-2 FRQs in around 80 minutes. I had around six tests in the semester: Started low 80s and eventually started scoring mid 90s-perfect. If there was a curve, it was to add points to everyone’s score until the highest score was a 100.</p>
<p>I found US Gov to be the easier of the two to study. A great deal of the classwork was fact memorization and terminology: Especially in studying the three branches and the bureaucracy. I think the most accurate depiction of the class is that it’s not as hard as most core classes: I devoted most of my work hours to APUSH more so than AP Gov, but that probably comes as common sense. Sure, it wasn’t a slacker class, but it certainly isn’t something I’d stress about on a day to day basis. If you’re worried about class grades, I think you should hold off on it until you take APUSH or US History: The classes certainly overlap in knowledge, especially when it comes to court cases.</p>
<p>I took it as a year-long class. Homework was minimal. Some reading and note taking, a lot of current event discussions. Its really up to the teacher, but the course was relatively easy for me and many others in my class. Its also one of the better classes if you have to due additional study outside of class. It is vocabulary based and focused on memorization and over-arching government concepts. </p>
<p>I thought it was relatively easy, an “A” in the course overall. If you use the Magleby book, it really helps prepare you for the AP rest. The AP test this year imo was relatively easy as well. You go over so much of it in class discussions and the FRQ are easily connectable to current events/history.</p>
<p>Much of it builds upon your knowlege of government from history and social studies courses so it is not completely new material. Aside from bi-weekly online quizes, I think I barely did any studying for the AP test. Take the course, I’m not saying it will be an easy A at your school but you’ll definitely come out of it with a better sense of how the government works and was really enlightening to me.</p>
<p>I got an easy A in the class. The only homework assignments were online and we were allowed to redo them up to 3 times, so it was hard to have a bad grade in that category. The tests were released FRQ’s and some MC (not sure if these were official AP questions or not though) so they weren’t too bad at all. </p>
<p>4 people in my class (including me) got A’s easily. The other 6 seemed to struggle to get higher grades. However, they might have had an easier time if they spent more time reading the book and less time blaming the “awful” teacher. </p>
<p>US Gov is pretty easy; follow current events and thatll help to get a 4/5</p>
<p>I had relatively easy teachers for AP Gov (we weren’t required to take notes on the textbook), and got easy A’s in the class. I didn’t really learn much from the class, so when it was time to take the AP exam, I had to spend a bit of time studying, but not too much time (a couple of hours). Of course, it might be different for different people, but overall, I would say that it was not a hard class or exam.</p>
<p>I took AP Gov as a freshman, and I agree, it just really depends on your teacher. My teacher really wanted to make his class so that grades correlated with what you got on the AP test. So if you got a C in his class all year, you would get a 3 on the exam. I had an 88-89% pretty much all year, and I pulled a 4 on the exam. I would say that overall, it isn’t that hard of an exam. I mean, there’s a reason that they have freshmen take it at my school.</p>
<p>The teacher at my school is known for being really difficult. I got a B in the class, and a 5 on the exam.</p>