Advice from an AP World veteran

Julie3
Sun, 24 Apr 2016 07:20:14 +0000

I took AP World last year and was one of three out of seventy students to receive a 4. My teacher barely taught anything, so the majority of the year consisted of self-teaching.

Anyway, I know AP exams are just around the corner, and for many students, AP world is their first AP test. I thought i’d share some tips to help out!

The multiple choice is hard, theres no denying that. During the test I tried to keep a talley of how many questions I thought i got wrong and eventually i was just counting every question. The only way to do good on the multiple choice is to study. I did this by buying the Barrons review book* and going through the index. I went through the index and checked off the topics i knew about then studied the topics I didn’t know. My textbook had online quizzes, so I used those to quiz myself. If i got a question wrong I would go back and review it.

The essays can literally be about any topic from any time from any continent. To study for this, I made timelines for each unit (6 units all together) and then labeled all the events and how they connected to eachother. Thus, if the essay specified “Asia, 1200-1300’s, trade routes.” I could esily recall the Mongols and how they spread diseases through trade routes. The timelines really helped categorize everything in my head.

AP World expects you to be able to differenciate between many different religions, so I also drew a chart to compare religions such as buddhism, hinduism, islam, etc. These are very popular essay topics.

The night before the test I had a narrowed down list of the topics I needed to briefly review. I also reviewed the essay formats to make sure they were stamped into my brain. The formats should be second nature to you- the last thing you want to happen is you forget how to suddenly write a DBQ.

If you want to sort of gauge what the essays might be on, you could look on the collegeboard website. They usually have the past couple year’s essays posted and it is highly unlikely that they will repeat those topics so soon.

If any one has any questions, feel free to ask!

I really do not reccoment Barrons for AP World as about 30% of the book was completely unessesary information.