Tips #1: BE FULLY RESPONSIBLE

If you are taking one AP course or more whether at your school or outside in preparation for the exam, do keep in mind that the instructors in these courses are a bit different than those that are in your usual courses. We would like to say that they don’t help much in your preparation. These instructors would only tell you what’s there on the exam and they don’t teach you bit by bit like they would do in your other usual courses. Your role in every AP subject is to really learn by yourself and actively explore the course’s content so that you have what you need to succeed. If you don’t take a course and can fully self prepare for the exam, then good for you.

Tips #2: LEARN EFFECTIVELY

Every single AP subject is rigorous as there’s a lot of content to cover for the exam. As students who have already taken the AP, we recommend you to have an effective study. One method that we would advise is to study fast but steady. Since every AP subject has a lot of content to cover, you’d have to learn fast in order to understand all of the things to be covered in the exam, but it doesn’t mean that you just skim through the content. Beside learning fast, you have to be able to fully understand the concepts. Furthermore, You need to know what concept is essential and important for the exam, don’t just learn everything. There’s a lot to cover, but you don’t have to store everything in your head, or else, you’d end up messing everything up on the exam day. To know what concept is necessary for the exam, you can listen to the instructor if you are in a course, he or she at the very least would definitely tell you what’s there on the exam. In case you don’t have an instructor, you can access a website called College Board and download past exam papers to know what concepts to cover.

Tips #3: PRACTICE

Don’t wait until near the exam day and start pulling out the concepts to review. Start practicing the moment you begin your preparation for the exam. Practice everyday. That is the key to success. Every time you think you have finished a concept, practice with it. Even if you think you have mastered it, keep practicing again. You never know what surprise the exam is going to give you so just practice. The most effective way to practice is to get the exam papers in the past. You can get those papers through College Board’s website. After you have those exam papers, set for yourself the exact time limit like when you have the real exam. This helps to simulate the same atmosphere as that of the exam day and to help you get accomodated to having a real exam with pressure.

Tips #4: SET A HIGH EXPECTATION

Every AP subject exam is scored out of 5. For most of the cases, schools require a passing score of 3, while several schools require a passing score of 4. If you are applying to a college or university that requires a passing score of 3 or 4 on one of your AP exams, we recommend that you always set your goal higher than your school’s requirement. The reason is that students don’t always get their expected score on their exams and end up not reaching their school’s requirement. Therefore, we advise you to always set for yourself a higher expectation. If you are applying for a school that requires a passing score of 3, set for yourself a 4 or even 5. If your school requires a 4, then you would have to set a 5 for yourself. By doing so, in the end, even if you don’t get your expected score, still you are likely to fulfill your school’s required score.

Tips #5: CRACK THE EXAM

All AP exams have a multiple-choice session and a free-response session. Both sessions are equally important, therefore, you have to do well for both of them. We will tell you our best strategy to crack every single AP exam.

Tips #5a: CRACK THE MULTIPLE-CHOICE SECTION

You should never underestimate the multiple-choice session. Most of the students have the impression that the multiple-choice questions are always easier than the free-response questions, but they are completely wrong. In fact, the choices for each question in the exam are usually similar to each other, therefore, you’d have to study really well to know which choice is actually correct. Furthermore, unlike the free-response questions where there are many possible correct answers, multiple-choice questions only have one correct answer.

Now, to be able to get a high score on the multiple-choice session, time and accuracy are the keys. A problem that many students encounter on the exam is usually ‘not enough time’ and as a result, their paper has omitted questions on it. To avoid this, you’d have to come up with an effective time management. When you are about to start the multiple-choice session, check how many questions there are and the time limit for that session. Then, take the time limit divided by the number of questions so that you can get the time limit for each question in the multiple-choice session. For example, if the multiple-choice session has 60 questions and a time limit of 60 minutes, take 60 minutes divided by 60 questions and that gives you 1 minute per question.

There’s one thing that we see in many students is that they often tend to check their answers again after they have done answering, but we think that’s not good. The reason is that students in fact often reach the time limit before they can check their work again.

Therefore, we advise you to take accuracy into account when you are choosing your answers. For example, from the example above, you will have for yourself a minute per question. For that one minute, you will have 40 seconds to answer the question and the remaining 20 seconds to check the answer again. Now, that’s the case for 100% time effectively. What if you have 10 minutes left and there are still 15 questions left to answer? Well, keep using our method until you are down to the last 5 minutes. Whatever the number of questions you have left in the last 5 minutes, just quickly pick an answer for each question. Don’t omit any questions, instead, answer them randomly because there’s a better chance that you may get one or two questions correct. If you don’t choose an answer for a question, you won’t get any credit for that question, so it’s better to choose randomly.

Tips #5b: CRACK THE FREE-RESPONSE SECTION

Some students may say this session is more difficult than the multiple-choice session, and they’re right. The reason is that this session has less questions compared to the multiple-choice session, which means that if you get a question wrong, you’d lose quite a lot of points. However, the good thing about this session is that it has many possible correct answers, so you will still get points even though your work isn’t 100% the same as the one written in the scoring guidelines.

The way we are going to approach this session is very similar to that of the multiple-choice session. You’d also have to come up with an effective time management. The only different step we are going to use is to prioritize the first half of the questions in the free-response session. The reason is that these questions are usually the easiest. Therefore, you have to focus on answering them correctly as best as possible. If you can answer the first half of the free response correctly, you are very much likely to pass the exam. The one last thing that you need to keep in mind is that you have to write neatly so that it’d be easier for the examiners to grade your paper. If they cannot read what you write, you are likely to fail.