Sophomore taking AP World History. I feel like I've learned nearly nothing during this year, which is making me pretty anxious about the test. This lack of learning is due to the constant cheating on my part, but what are ya gonna do I guess. Any tips for the test?
Next year I'll be in APUSH, and APstats which shouldn't be too bad.
Don't cheat next time? There's not much I can offer you besides that, if you wanted to do well on the AP exam you should have put some effort into learning the material over the course of the year. "What are ya gonna do" is be honest in your classwork and put actual effort into school, or else take the bad grade on the AP test that you
earned. cheating is for scuzzballs.
Moralizing being done with, since AP World is basically the last exam of the year, you do have some time left (2.5 weeks) to study and prepare. It's been two years since I took the test, but usually the essays are structured in a way that the DBQ is from the 20th century, one of the essays is from ancient history (till about the renaissance), and one is from the period in between the renaissance and world war I. They also try to get many world regions in there—so basically, cover as much as possible. If you have at least a basic outline of world history and know the RUBRIC for the DBQ (1 point for thesis, 1 point for grouping into 3 appropriate categories, 1 point for analyzing bias in a document, 1 point for suggesting an additional document which could be helpful, 3 points for using all documents to support argument and correctly interpreting them) you can usually BS a 6 or 7 on it. The others are much harder to BS if you don't know jack shit. I seem to remember the Ottoman Empire being tested with disproportionate strength but beyond that I can't help with the multiple choice. I'm a history buff myself, so I didn't have to study for the AP World exam, so you'll have to get cramming tips from others—but one thing i can say is
start now.
I've recently been self-studying for the AP Chemistry exam (I'm in 10th grade; my school doesn't really offer AP courses to anybody until 11th grade, as our AP US History course starts at grade 10 and lasts for two years.) I'm not actually taking the course at school, but I AM taking the typical Honors level High School chemistry course, so I do have some background. Obviously I've put in a lot (noooot enough) of effort and time for this, but it would definitely help if some experienced people have any tips for just taking the test in general; anything to watch out for, and any topics to know more solidly than others? (The test format has changed since last year, however, and it's pretty different.) I'm hoping to get a 5, because my target school only accepts a 5. Pre-gridding was fun; I was pretty much one of the only sophomores in a room full of Juniors and Seniors, and I had no idea what I was doing. Oh, well.
Next year I'll be overloading; planning on taking AP Biology, APUSH, AP Comp Sci, AP LangComp, and AP Calc BC. Should be fun. In my Senior year, I'll be taking AP Physics C, AP Macroeconomics, AP Language and Literature, AP Stats, AP Euro, and AP Spanish Literature and Culture. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
wow that is only twelve AP exams. I'm white and I've taken 14. you have brought shame onto your family. Seppuku!
actually though, as toshi said, overloading APs for the sake of overloading APs is absolutely miserable and should never be done. I did it my senior year and though I'm glad i did (see my earlier post) if you don't have a similar reason then you are basically signing yourself up for misery. This year has been ridiculously stressful for me and the stress has basically made everything in my life less enjoyable. If you do have a good reason to be taking those courses though (or as was said you enjoy all those subjects—which i find hard to believe, fuck AP Lit, and it usually covers the same credit as AP LangComp anyways) then go get 'em tiger!
Honors chemistry can prepare you pretty well for some sections of the AP chemistry exam and very poorly for others. However, I can't think of a single topic in chemistry, except maybe stoichiometry, which is perfectly covered by Honors, so I hope you're not banking on that. You're probably going to be pretty good on things like the structure of the atom and formation of bonds, though you may want to study them a little.
Where you're really going to want to invest your time is equilibrium chemistry (in solutions), thermochemistry, and electrochemistry. These are pretty much the heaviest tested, most technical, hardest to BS portions of the AP Chemistry exam, and the ones least covered by (at least my) honors chem course. Fortunately, they're each also able to be boiled down to a couple of equations.
