Which AP course is easier to self study in the shortest period of time and what preparations books would be the most effective for one to score a five. I can only study one and like I already stated, I perfer to do the one that requires the least amount of effort.
I self-studied Macro and took the class for Stats. I ended up with a 5 on both, but I studied far less for economics than I did for stats (and as I said, I also took a class for stats… And still studied more).
So in my opinion, Macro is an easier self-study option. I just got a prep book (I used REA - not crash course - but it wasn’t the best. I would recommend PR or Barron’s or something) and read through it, and watched videos from “Mr. Clifford” on youtube. Once I learned all the material, I did all the practice tests in the book and about 10 sets of the released FRQ’s. After every test/ set of FRQ’s I went over what I got wrong and looked up more about the topic if I found it necessary. It really wasn’t too much work.
While I got a 5 in stats, it was much more work. I went to class and took notes, did all the homework, etc. Then I got a prep book (I used Kaplan and liked it a lot) and read through some of the more confusing sections. I did all of the practice problems as well. Then I moved onto the practice tests. After each test I went over the problems I got wrong and did a few similar ones for practice. A few weeks before the test I did some of the released FRQ’s. This review process took a lot more time than my process for macro… And this was after taking the class!
So yeah, I definitely found macro to be less time consuming but neither was too challenging.