It’s the new year. We’ve all been well stuffed with holiday meats and sweets and have (hopefully) enjoyed our visits with extended family members. But now the vacation is over; it is time to get down to business.
If there is one thing that has always worried me about many of my AP students, it’s their tendency to procrastinate. In previous years, I’ve noticed a definite spike in our center’s enrollment come late March. Formerly nonchalant students see early May bearing down on them like a freight train and suddenly feel the need to seek out assistance with the mounds of difficult AP vocabulary or the concepts they never mastered the first time through. But the month of April is not the time to get serious! Studying for the AP exam in any subject should, ideally, be a year-long process.
If you haven’t started studying for the AP exam by this point, you need to start now. The following are some of the things you need to do before February rolls around:
* Buy a review book. In my experience, Barron’s has the most challenging, highest quality sample questions, but REA and Kaplan are also excellent sources.
* Get organized. Collect all of your old tests, notes, and vocabulary worksheets and sort them by topic.
* Make flashcards for all key terms. This is especially important in history, geography, English, and biology, courses that are heavily dependent upon knowing the terminology.
* Start looking at sample questions from previous years. You can find sample questions at the College Board site here.
* Find someone to study with. This can be either a tutor such as myself or a peer. Getting feedback from someone else is crucial to the process of studying.
Again: the earlier you start taking the May exams seriously, the better off you will be!
