adventures of a typical high school student

Hello everyone!

What with the rescheduling and completely new format of the AP tests for this year to accommodate quarantine and coronavirus conditions, we’ve all had to reevaluate our study plans. For people taking the APs in class, this is frustrating and seems to undermine your year of hard work. For self-studiers, this is a bad thing and a good thing all at once, as there’s less to study but no one to guide you. Today I’m going to be sharing my study plans for the two AP tests/classes I’m taking this year (AP European History and AP Psychology), so keep on reading if you’re interested.

First, I’ll start with AP Euro, the AP class that I actually take at school. Since the test is just composed of a DBQ and nothing else, my teacher has come up with sample DBQ prompts for each week. We don’t really have any other online assignments besides figuring out how we’re going to study for the test, and making sure we keep up with his posted updates about test information/when he ends up grading our practice DBQs. That being said, that means I’m kind of my own to self-study for this test as well. However, we had almost finished all the content for the class, and we already finished through the period that’s being tested a month ago, so I’m thankful for that.

AP EURO STUDY PLAN

• The aforementioned practice DBQs. My teacher is posting a huge document of prompts/documents and suggesting we do one to two practices a week, particularly focusing on pacing. He’s kind enough to look over our work and give us extra pointers if we ask for them, but they’re optional and not being graded yet (it’s a long story, but my district isn’t allowing any of the online work we do to be graded yet).
• Watching the AP review sessions that College Board is putting out. I’m not going to watch the ones that cover topics not on the test since for the most part, my class was ahead and already learned about them, but I’ll watch the ones that review content tested. It’s always good to learn from someone new and hear a different voice on the topic, and the teacher in the video might focus on little details or events that mine didn’t.
• Reading my review book as a cram of information. I already bought a Princeton Review prep book at the beginning of the school year, and I don’t intend to let it go to waste. I’ve used it as a resource for summing up major events in general a couple times throughout the year when cramming for unit tests, and I think that will still make it helpful in this case as well.
• Rewriting/organizing some of my notes. I take pride in my Euro notes because they’re very detailed, but they’re not the neatest. Since the test is open-note but also on a major time constraint, I don’t want to have to flip through a bunch of messy, tiny notes where words are shoved in every square inch of the paper. I plan on organizing them by unit, and maybe typing them up so they’re easier to read, and highlighting major events or details.

AP Psych is a bit different because I took the class online over summer, so the information’s a bit fuzzy in my head. I’m kind of glad I don’t have to re-learn every single detail, but it’s still difficult because I know the multiple choice would’ve been easier to study for. I’m lucky enough to have a couple friends who are also taking Psych, so I’m hoping to get some study tips or help from them as well.

AP PSYCH STUDY PLAN

• Watching the College Board AP review sessions. I’ll probably watch all of them, even the ones that are on topics not tested, just because I find psychology interesting and feel like I didn’t learn everything from my online class. My reasoning for doing this is the same as with Euro though, so I won’t explain further.
• Using my resources. I bought the Barron’s flashcards and a Princeton Review book a few months ago in preparation for self-studying, and just like with Euro, I’m going to make the most of them. I still need to brush up on content, so reading the review book and testing myself with flashcards will still be helpful, even though there’s no multiple choice.
• Going over FRQs I wrote for the class. Since the FRQ format is still the same, I can look at all the graded FRQs I wrote in my online class over the summer. I know that the two FRQs on the AP test are going to be specific types of questions, so I’ll try and find if any of the questions I did were comparable.
• Practicing tons of FRQs!! – At this point, that’s really the main thing I should do once I brush up on the actual content of the class. I’ll focus in on the specific types of questions they’re asking and try and find as many sample questions as I can. I’ll probably ask my friends in Psych to look over them if they’re willing.

I hope these study plans help you out if you wanted to know what a fellow student was doing, or if you just wanted to get motivated to start studying now. I know this is a weird change, but hopefully it works out in our favor. I know the shortened test seems to cheapen the value of how hard we’ve worked all year, but at least test days will be shorter and it might be easier to do well on the tests. Above all, we’re all in this together 🙂

P.S. Screw the College Board!

Brooke