With May rapidly approaching, it is time for students to start planning and preparing for Advanced Placement (“AP”) exams. Below are five tips on how best to prepare for AP exams.

Tip 1: Understand What You Need to Review
A critical step in the preparation process is to understand what you know and what you know you don’t know. This allows you to establish a plan for how to allocate your time and resources. Here are a few resources you will want to use to do this:

• AP Course Syllabus
• Old Tests, Quizzes, and/or Papers
• AP Course and Exam Description

The last document can be found on the main course page for each AP class, which you can access by visiting the College Board’s AP Course list here. This document is a complete description of the skills and content areas that will be tested on the exam.

The goal in reviewing these documents is to understand what areas you are weakest in, so you can specifically review these ahead of the exam. Pro tip: Make sure you compare your class’s syllabus to the AP Course and Exam Description to ensure your teacher covered all of the concepts you will be tested on. Concepts that you only covered briefly should be reviewed in depth, while concepts that you covered thoroughly will likely require less time spent reviewing.

Tip 2: Develop a Study Plan
Now that you know what you need to review, you want to develop a study schedule. You do not need to know exactly what you will study each day and for how long. But, you should have a general idea of what content areas you will be reviewing each week leading up to the exam. And, you want to ensure you give yourself plenty of time, especially for content areas you covered quickly during the school year.

The beginning of your plan should be weighted toward content review. And, the latter part of your plan should largely be spent testing yourself by taking practice exams, answering multiple-choice and short response questions, and writing timed essays (if applicable).

Tip 3: Find Excellent Review Resources
In order to both fill in the gaps in your knowledge and also review older content, ask your AP course teacher for his or her recommendation on the best AP review books—these are published by companies like The Princeton Review and Barron’s. Additional resources beyond a review book can also be helpful, such as instructional videos that can be found on websites like Khan Academy and YouTube.

And, don’t forget—your course textbook is a natural place to start. Look at the end of each chapter for a summary of the chapter’s key terms and concepts and for practice questions. We also highly recommend flash cards (traditional or digital): These are a great way to both stay organized and test yourself!

Tip 4: Take Practice Exams
Toward the second half of your study plan, having thoroughly reviewed all of the content on the exam, you will want to take full-length practice exams. The best AP practice questions and tests are developed by the College Board—the company that creates the AP courses and exams.

You can find these College Board resources in a couple of places. First, look at the AP Course and Exam Description we mentioned earlier. It contains sample exam questions. Second, look around the Internet and peruse the College Board website for complete practice exams. These can sometimes be hard to find, but the College Board occasionally releases complete exams from past years. If you can’t find anything, ask your AP teacher. He or she will likely have copies of past exams and/or know where to find them. And, if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to point you in the right direction.

Tip 5: Dive In!
Once you start your study plan, you want to make sure you stick to a schedule. It is easy to get bogged down in studying new content only to realize you are now falling behind. Do not let the first half of your study plan (content review) run into the critically important second half (test-taking).

Finally, if you have questions about AP exams or would like for us to match your student with one of our instructors for one-on-one tutoring in a particular course, please call our President and Founder Scott Moser at (303) 819-4328 or contact him via email at scott@mosereducational.com.