<p>After reading a bunch of threads on this site, I get the impression that prepping for the AP courses I'll be taking during the school year is a waste of my summer. Yet I know that the valedictorian of the senior class got his grades mostly because he learned the material during the summer.</p>
<p>Mind you, I don't plan to take a class or anything, just read over the Princeton Review books for the subjects I'm taking, and take practice tests (unless someone could recommend a better approach).</p>
<p>Is this a waste of time? The val got nearly straight A+'s, so I'm assuming the summer prep helped him. I don't necessarily want straight A+'s, but with 4 APs next year (junior year), and a busy EC schedule, I would like at least straight A's without too much difficulty.</p>
<p>if you just do a bit of light reviewing (ex. brushing up on basics) it wouldn’t be that big of a waste of time
but going overboard with practice tests and stuff would just be a waste since you will forget everything you learned over the summer by the time you take the ap test</p>
<p>It depends what APs you’re taking. Which ones?</p>
<p>AP English I had required summer homework, so that was all I did.
AP Calc- did nothing
AP Euro- required summer homework
AP Spanish- did nothing
AP Psych- self-studied, so read an entire textbook and review/prep book and studied those.
AP Physics- ended up not taking this, but I had read through some regular physics stuff since I hadn’t taken the course</p>
<p>If you don’t have required summer homework, make up your own…depends on which APs though.</p>
<p>I’ll be a junior, and taking the maximum number of AP’s that are available to a junior:
AP English Literature
AP Calc AB
AP US History
AP Biology</p>
<p>I know I’ll be getting summer hw for at least AP Calc, and perhaps the others as well. Any ideas for summer hw specific to these, if I don’t get any assigned hw?</p>
<p>AP English- if you have any type of reading list from the teacher for the year, then you could go ahead on that. Idk, practice analyzing literature.</p>
<p>In general, get the AP prep book (Barrons, PR, Kaplan, 5 Steps, etc) and read them. That will give you a background of the material. That would be most helpful for APUSH, Calc, and Bio, not so much for English. I didn’t find an English prep book to be very helpful, except for practice tests and the end of the year.</p>
<p>I wasn’t planning to doing much for english anyway, as I couldn’t figure out how I’d do it. I’ll just read some books over the summer (like I was planning to anyway).</p>
<p>I’ll probably be using my sister’s old REA prep books, and a few PR, from when she was in junior year. They seem pretty good, so I’ll just familiarize myself with the concepts of each class. Maybe I’ll focus more on the beginning material, since it’ll still be in my memory when it’s covered in class.</p>
<p>My school requires summer work and classes if you take an AP class.
I am taking AP Spanish Language, and we have 3 summer classes, and a ton worksheets, workbook sections, movies to watch, and online activities.</p>
<p>Well, it wouldn’t be a waste of time, but I don’t believe it’s necessary. I did no summer prep for my several AP classes, and I got straight A minuses but that was mostly because I failed to do homework on time [laziness, not because it was hard]; I aced most of my test.</p>
<p>bobtheboy, I’m planning to be very active in EC’s, so I don’t want to have to work too hard on nightly homework. If I do minimal prep work (like do the summer hw for each class, and read the first few chapters of my review books), would this benefit me? Or would the benefit be negligible?</p>
<p>Well, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. I am doing the same thing because I don’t have much to do this summer. I don’t know how big the benefit would be, but experience tells me that if you learn something once, even if you forget it, you learn it quicker the next time. So, it would probably take the edge off of your classes.</p>
