How to Review for your AP History Exam

Use Effective Techniques

    Suffering is Not Virtuous or Necessary

    A Better Path

    If It's Not Baroque, Don't Fix It

Have A Plan, Stan!

    Use Practice Tests Strategically

    Prioritize   ​

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you wont' have endless time to study.  The exam comes up faster than you think it will.  The rest of your life doesn't stop.  It's critical to make time to eat, sleep, and socialize during exam season.  So, when you do have time to study, it's important to make the most of that time.  There's no time to waste doing things that are ineffective or give you a poor return for the time you invest.  ​

I've worked with a lot of student who were beyond frustrated by their study routine.  Sometimes, these students just didn't know a better way to study.  They didn't know that studying could be easier and less frustrating.  If that's you, skip down for some pro tips.

But sometimes people resist doing things that are easier because it doesn't vibe with your expectations.  Sometimes, everyone in your life is telling you that it has to be hard.  Previous students told you about their marathon study sessions.  Teachers tell you that you need to "work hard" and "buckle down."  If you never have a different model, it may feel alien to adopt a different mindset.

I would never tell you that you don't have to put in effort.  You already know from taking the class that this endeavor requires persistence.  The problem is that the first guy who ran a marathon promptly died.  Sun Tzu, famous war strategist, used to counsel his generals on how to exhaust an opponent.  His top tip?  Wake them up in the middle of the night, force them to move to a different spot, and make sure they don't eat.

You are not an invading army!  The stakes are a lot higher in war, and nobody has ever counseled their troops to skip meals and stay up all night doing vigorous exercise.  It's important to take breaks, rest, and eat at regular intervals.  More than okay, it's essential.  Your brain needs to sleep to effectively form memories, and it needs food to provide energy to think.  If you take your exam hungry, tired, and exhausted, you will not do well.

You deserve the best of everything when you take on a challenge.  That means great food, a good night's rest, and time spent with loved ones.  It also means charting a path that works with your brain instead of against it.  Working effectively works better than working a lot.  ​

The path to success does not conclude with you being so sick and tired you can't do your best.  It is one-hundred percent okay to work smarter and take short-cuts if you still get the results you want.

So, here are some things that typically use up energy without getting great outcomes:

• Highlighting
• Making flashcards
• Rereading textbooks
• Scouring the internet for resources
• Cramming at the last minute

The following techniques tend to get better results without requiring significantly more effort.

• Active recall (including my personal favorite, the Blurting Method)
• Elaboration
• Using premade materials.
• Reusing review materials from class.
• Spaced review ​

There's no need to fix anything that's not broken.  If you have a method, and it works for you, godspeed.

But do know that sometimes strategies that work in standard-level classes or middle school do not work in AP.  Also, sometimes strategies that work for unit exams don't work for comprehensive exams.  That's night a sign that you're not working hard enough, or that you are stupid.  It is the nature of tackling a task that is bigger.  You can't always outwork it.

So, if you feel like you're spending a lot of time, but stuck in some Sysiphean hellscape where nothing changes, know that the solution isn't roll the bolder up the hill again.  You can't do the same thing and expect different results.  ​

• There's a limited number of good ones.  It is possible to run out of high-quality materials early in the process.  This is particularly true for multiple-choice questions.  If that happens, you won't be able to monitor your progress.  It's much harder to assess strengths and weaknesses.
• They're time-consuming.  Remember that thing I said about running a marathon?  A full AP US History or AP World History exam takes three hours to complete.  That's a barrier to you finding time to actually practice.
• They are an inefficient way to learn content.  If the content has become fuzzy, taking practice exams is a poor way to refresh your memory.  They never cover all of the content, so you wind up with gaps.  You also need to know the content well enough to focus on the question and interpret the document correctly.

In short, you can do many practice questions and get no better on the exam.  Luckily, you can work smarter and be strategic about using practice tests.  Here are some strategies:

• Use practice tests to inform your content review.  If you miss five questions on the Enlightenment, review that content before you take another exam.  This can also be a sign that you need to review the material just before and just after that topic as well.
• Use practice tests to check your understanding of the content.  This is similar to the first strategy, but you would review first.  Then, select practice questions that relate to this content.  If you get them right, you probably studied the right things.  If you get them wrong, it's time to shake up your study routine.  Your method isn't working for this tasks.
• Complete a single portion of the exam at a time.  You don't have to take an entire practice test in one sitting.  You can simply do the multiple choice questions.  Or you could write an LEQ.  It's often easier to find a free hour than three free hours right in a row.
• Break down sections of the exam into their pieces.  If you don't have an hour to do a full set of multiple-choice questions, do half of them in a half hour.  Or a set of ten in ten minutes.  If you struggle to contextualize your LEQ, go through a bunch of prompts and just do contextualization.  Outline a DBQ, but don't write it.  Breaking down tasks can seriously accelerate this whole process.
  

It helps to be mindful and intentional.  Don't fall back on practice tests.  Fall back on content review.  Use the practice tests to check where you are and adjust.  ​

Part of making the most of your time is spending it on the things that are most likely to move you the furthest forward. 

That includes reviewing the content.  But it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start.  Here are some things to consider:

• Some content shows up more frequently on the exam than other content.  In AP US History and AP World History, this content is in the middle of the course.  Therefore, it make sense to spend less time reviewing the very first and last units of a course.
• Humans naturally forget things over time.  Yes, this is not rocket science.  But it's easy to overlook.  Here's the practical application: it often makes sense to spend less time on the last units of the course.  Because this information is more recent, it's easier for your brain to recall it.  In contrast, you may find that information from before Winter Break is fuzzy.  That's totally normal, and not something to beat yourself up about.  It's just a sign that area of the course could use your attention
• Content you didn't master the first time.  It can be uncomfortable to revisit sections of the course that were more challenging.  It's not uncommon for people to focus their energy on things that come easily.  Again, the point here is not to beat yourself up about what happened.  Not understanding something is just a sign that part of the course needs a little TLC from you.  This information may show up on the exam, and it will be more uncomfortable to realize you don't know it then.

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